Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


In  fa* 


1 

Digitized  by 

the  Internet  Archive 

in  2014 

http://archive.org/details/staterightsphotoOOIewi_0 


STATE  RIGHTS 


PHOTOGRAPH 


FROM  THE 


,  RUINS  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE, 


APPENDED  DISSERTATIONS  ON  THE  IDEAS  OF  NATIONALITY,  OF  SOVE- 
REIGNTY, AND  THE  RIGHT  OF  REVOLUTION. 


By  PROF.  TAYLER  LEWIS, 

UNION  COLLEGE. 


God  reqnireth  that  which  is  past.—  Ecclesiastcs,  iii,  15. 


ALBANY : 

WEED,   PARSONS  AND  COMPANY 

PRINTERS  AND  PUBLISHERS. 
1865. 


STATE  RIGHTS : 


A 


PHOTOGRAPH 


FROM  THE 


RUINS  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE, 


WITH 


APPENDED  DISSERTATIONS  ON  THE  IDEAS  OP  NATIONALITY,  OF  SOVE- 
REIGNTY, AND  THE  RIGHT  OF  REVOLUTION. 


By  PROF.  TAYLER  LEWIS, 

UNION  COLLEGE. 

God  requireth  that  which  is  past. — Ecclesiastes,  iii,  15 

\ 

ALBANY: 
WEED,  PARSONS  AND  COMPANY, 

PRINTERS  AND  PUBLISHERS. 
1865. 


Entered  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  sixty-four, 

By  WEED,  PARSONS  &  CO., 

in  the  Clerk's  office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Northern 
District  of  New  York. 


JOHN  K.  PORTER  AND  DEODATUS  WRIGHT, 

THIS  BOOK  IS  RESPECTFULLY] 

TAYLER  LEWIS. 


PREFACE. 


This  little  book  is  written  for  all  loyal  and  thinking  men,  whose 
minds  are  intent  upon  the  preservation  of  the  American  nationality. 
They  will  see  the  application  of  the  parallel,  whatever  they  may 
think  of  the  manner  in  which  it  is  now  presented.  One  merit, 
however,  the  writer  would  claim  for  the  brief  picture  he  here  offers 
to  the  public.  It  is  strictly  true.  It  is  not  overdone.  It  cannot 
be  overdone.  If  it  fails,  it  is  in  falling  short  of  the  reality  of  that 
state  of  things  which  we  have  called  a  political  hell.  There  is  one 
thing  that  prevents  this  from  being  realized,  as  it  ought  to  be,  even 
by  scholars.  They  are  so  much  occupied  with  the  poetry,  the 
philosophy,  the  fair  literature  of  Greece,  that  they  neglect  the 
details  of  her  minute  political  history,  and  so  form  a  very  inade- 
quate view  of  its  political  horrors.  The  aim  of  the  writer  has  been 
to  show  this  latter  feature  truthfully,  and,  at  the  same  time,  graphi- 
cally, by  selecting  those  points  of  the  old  Greek  political  life,  in 
which  it  so  marvelously  resembles  our  own.  The  more  he  studied 
it,  the  more  he  was  struck  with  the  perfection  of  the  parallel.  If 
there  is  something  which  has  the  appearance  of  repetition  in  set- 
ting it  forth,  it  is  to  keep  vividly  before  the  mind  the  one  idea  of 
the  book.  Autonomy  was  the  bane  of  Greece ;  the  doctrine  of 
"  state  rights  "  and  "  state  sovereignties,"  has  been,  and  is  yet,  the 
rock  of  danger  to  the  American  Nationality.  This  idea  is  never 
lost  sight  of.  In  every  seeming  digression  it  is  still  remembered, 
and  other  topics  are  treated  only  to  make  the  return  to  it  more 
clear  and  effective.  God  has  given  us  a  mirror  in  the  past.  Let 
us  not  be  like  "  him  who  beholds  his  natural  face  in  the  glass,  then 
goeth  away,  and  straightway  forgetteth  what  manner  of  man  he 
was." 

In  the  history  of  Greece  we  have  a  guide  book  for  almost  every 
step  we  may  take.  God  grant  that  this  brief  effort  to  call  attention 
to  it,  may  be  of  some  avail  in  this  most  trying  crisis  of  our  Ameri- 
can nationality. 

Schenectady,  September  16,  1864. 


STATE  RIGHTS. 


The  saddest  book  in  the  world  is  Grote's  History  of 
Greece.  Yet  sad  as  it  is,  there  is  no  one  for  us  more 
instructive.  We  often  hear  our  government  spoken  of  as 
a  great  experiment.  Nothing  like  it  was  ever  known 
before.  We  have  been  accustomed,  too,  to  regard  it  as 
something  lying  altogether  out  of  the  usual  track  of  his- 
tory. All  references  to  the  ancient  republics  have  been 
despised  as  pedantic  and  irrelevant.  Christianity  made  a 
difference.  Men  were  continually  saying  this  whose 
Christianity  did  not  excel,  and  whose  ordinary  moral  and 
political  virtue  fell  below  that  of  Pericles  and  Thucy- 
dides,  very  far  below  that  of  Aristides  and  Socrates. 
And  then  again,  there  was  that  magic  word  "  representa- 
tion," as  though  a  stream  could  rise  above  its  fountain,  or 
any  outward  change  of  mode  could  produce  a  change  in 
human  nature,  or  make  the  representative  to  be  in  the 
long  run,  any  thing  higher,  or  better,  or  more  intelligent 
than  the  represented.  For  all  government  is  representa- 
tion in  some  form,  and  to  fancy  for  ourselves  any  peculiar 
defense  here  was  but  to  cheat  ourselves  with  a  word,  and 
all  the  mischiefs  it  might  occasion  when  it  came  to  be,  as  all 
such  words  in  time  most  certainly  will,  mere  political  cant. 

A  more  complete  exemplar  cannot  be  found  for  us  than 
is  presented  in  the  States  of  Greece.  Look  at  her  map. 
How  beautifully  unique  the  territory,  as  though  it  had 
been  expressly  formed  for  one  great  nation,  composed  of 
people  speaking  one  common  language,  having  one  com- 
mon origin,  one  common  heroic  age,  one  common  store- 
house of  tribal  and  national  reminiscences !    "  When  the 


<s 


Most  High  separated  the  sons  of  Adam,  when  he  gave 
the  nations  their  inheritance,"  here  was  the  home  for  the 
sons  of  Javan,  even  as  Canaan  was  destined  for  the  sons 
of  Israel.  A  glance  at  the  map  shows  that  here  was  the 
seat  of  beneficent  empire ;  and  such  it  would  have  been 
had  not  the  petty  depravity,  the  selfish,  short  judging 
jealousy  of  man,  thwarted,  as  it  sometimes  is  permitted 
to  thwart,  the  divine  arrangements  in  nature  and  creation. 
This  map  of  Greece  is  of  itself  a  beautiful  spectacle  for 
the  eye;  how  much  higher  rises  its  conceptual # beauty 
when  we  contemplate  it  as  the  destined  seat  of  one  indi- 
visible political  whole,  though  so  mournfully  failing  in  the 
historical  realization  of  the  idea. 

Our  own  map,  no  less  than  that  of  Greece,  suggests  the 
thought  of  one  people,  and  one  nationality.  Separate 
sovereign  powers  could  not  exist  there,  they  cannot  exist 
here,  without  everlasting  wars.  This  was  proved  in  our 
case,  a  century  ago,  when  the  country  in  contention  was  a 
wilderness.  England  had  the  coasts ;  France  was  creeping 
in  at  the  West.  But  even  then  it  was  seen,  that  this 
unique  territory  between  the  Lakes,  the  Atlantic,  the  Gulf, 
and  the  Mississippi,  could  not  bear  two  sovereignties ;  and 
that  same  consistent  nation  that  sees  no  sufficient  reason 
in  our  struggle  for  unity,  now  that  this  territory  is  the 
abode  of  thirty  millions,  then  fought  nine  years,  and  all 
round  the  globe,  for  the  same  object,  when  its  interior  was 
all  an  unknown  waste.  But  there  was  one  aspect  in 
which  our  map  pleads  stronger  still  for  nationality  than 
that  of  Greece.  The  outward  boundaries  of  both  are 
most  natural,  unsurpassed,  in  this  respect,  by  any  pre- 
sented in  the  world's  geography.  But  in  Greece  the 
inward  divisions  also,  though  absolutely  and  relatively  too 
small  for  nationalities,  were  almost  wholly  natural,  or  the 
result  of  pure  historical  causes.  The  sons  of  Javan  went 
forth,  like  the  Northmen,  with  no  other  patent  than  their 
own  free  roving  will,  and  that  section  of  the  Great  Char- 
ter (Gen.  x,  5),  which  allotted  to  them  the  Land  of  the 
West  and  the  "  Isles  of  the  Sea."    Their  settlements  were 


9 


the  offspring  of  no  trading  companies,  or  Duke  of  York 
patents,  or  mining  grants  ;  they  had  no  Mason  and  Dixon 
lines ;  and  so  their  boundaries  were  the  valleys,  and  river 
basins,  and  separate  winding  bays,  in  which  they  settled. 
There  was  something  in  this  which  might  palliate,  though 
not  excuse,  those  local  jealousies  which  ever  prevented 
their  being  one  great  people.  We  have  no  such  plea. 
Our  internal  divisions,  on  the  other  hand,  are,  of  all  things, 
the  most  unnatural  in  position,  as  they  are  mainly  arbi- 
trary in  their  history.  To  any  intelligent  mind,  the  bare 
map  presents  a  stronger  argument  against  "  state  rights  " 
and  "state  sovereignties,"  than  volumes  of  abstract 
reasoning.  One  steady  look  is  enough  to  dissipate  all  the 
sophistries  of  Calhoun.  What  a  contrast  between  the  exte- 
rior and  the  interior,  between  the  whole  and  the  parts ! 
Without  and  around,  how  perfectly  natural  and  unique 
the  bounds  by  which  God  has  made  us  geographically  one 
people !  Within  and  'between,  how  utterly  different,  how 
directly  opposite,  we  may  say,  the  lines  that  separate  these 
strange  "  state  sovereignties !  "  There  is  hardly  a  natural 
boundary  between  them.  The  Ohio,  to  a  partial  extent, 
the  Potomac,  and  the  Connecticut,  between  two  or  three 
divisions,  and  that  is  all.  Our  state  lines  are,  in  the  main, 
as  artificial  as  county  lines,  or  the  ward  lines  in  our  cities. 
They  are,  for  the  most  part,  surveyors'  courses,  running 
straight  on  across  mountains,  rivers,  valleys,  prairies,  and 
every  thing  else  that  comes  in  their  way.  And  so  these 
states  themselves,  were,  for  the  most  part,  land  patents, 
grants  made  to  individuals,  or  corporations — neither  grant- 
ors nor  grantees  knowing  anything  about  the  real  geogra- 
phy of  the  country.  They  were  "sovereignties"  made 
on  paper  in  scriveners'  shops.  It  was  matter  wholly  of 
conjecture  what  such  grants  might  contain.  In  some,  the 
lines  ran  to  the  South  Sea,  wherever  that  might  be.  One 
line  of  the  Virginia  patent,  as  first  given,  ran  indefinitely 
due  northwest,  a  course  which,  unless  stopped  somewhere, 
would  make  an  everlasting  spiral  round  the  north  pole. 
These  lines  had  little  or  nothing  historical  about  them ; 
2 


10 


and  by  this  we  mean  that  they  were  determined  much 
oftener  by  purely  private,  than  by  political  or  public 
reasons.  A  land  speculation  in  England,  or  Holland, 
varying  this  way  or  that,  would  have  made  them  wholly 
different.  A  mistake  of  a  scrivener  in  a  bearing,  or  a  dis- 
tance, would  have  altogether  changed  the  value  and  the 
dignity  of  these  mighty  sovereignties.  That  geographical 
wliole^  on  the  other  hand,  which  the  higher  movements  of 
history  were  filling  up,  and  bringing  out,  was  but  little 
affected  by  such  unhistorical  causes  as  these.  It  had  its 
birth  and  its  progress,  its  shaping  unity,  and  its  national 
consummation,  in  the  great  movements  of  God  and  his- 
tory— movements  even  more  unique,  more  visibly  reveal- 
ing the  hand  of  the  Great  Mover,  than  any  that  made  the 
nationalities  of  Borne  or  Britain. 

These  internal  state  boundaries  of  ours  point  to  hardly 
anything  beyond  the  merest  arbitrary  and  accidental  inte- 
rests. Even  the  Kew  England  States,  the  most  historical 
of  them  all,  have  hardly  any  history,  worth  calling  such, 
except  as  they  make  one  peculiar  whole.  But  elsewhere 
the  state  boundaries  are  still  more  unmeaning  and  acci- 
dental. Especially  is  it  so  with  those  of  them  that  are  the 
mere  creatures  of  congressional  enactment.  Look  at  these 
lines  as  straight  as  the  compass  can  make  them,  these  par- 
allelograms, these  rhomboids  and  trapezoids,  these  bear- 
ings due  west,  due  north,  these  parallels  of  latitude,  these 
meridional  protractions,  and  then  ask  history  whether  ever 
before,  in  any  part  of  the  world,  "sovereign  states"  had 
been  ever  thus  divided,  or  could  keep  thus  divided  ?  How 
would  the  map  of  Greece  look  if  cut  up  in  this  manner  ? 
Let  us  suppose  that  from  some  arbitrary  force,  Europe  had 
been  thus  dissected  into  squares  and  parallelograms  a 
thousand  years  ago.  How  long  would  it  have  remained 
in  that  singular  condition?  In  less  than  half  a  century 
would  it  have  broken  up,  and  nature  and  history  have  had 
their  way  again.  Such  lines  may  stand  when  they  serve 
the  purposes  of  municipal  arrangement ;  they  may  be  very 
convenient  when  there  is  an  all  encircling  national  whole, 


a  true  historical  unity  keeping  them  together,  like  the  old 
British  imperiimi,  or  the  true  American  nationality  that 
immediately  took  its  place.  Take  this  away,  and  all  secu- 
rity for  permanence  is  gone.  Eemove  this  great  embracing 
whole,  this  strong  historical  band,  and  how  long  will  the 
inward  artificial  lines  that  represent  nothing  more  historical 
than  grants  to  English  Dukes,  and  soulless  corporations, 
preserve  that  scicredness  with  which  the  superficial  declaimer 
would  seek  to  clothe  them  ?  State  lines  are  sacred  things, 
say  they;,  they  mark  the  old  Dominion,  they  are  historical 
monuments  of  the  ancient  commonwealth  of  Carolina. 
The  Union,  on  the  other  hand,  is  but  a  piece  of  conven- 
tional patchwork;  there  is  nothing  sacred  about  it;  it  is 
no  true  nationality.  A  large  organ  of  veneration,  indeed, 
must  they  possess  who  can  take  in  such  a  view  as  this. 
To  come  back  to  sober  truth,  what  is  there  historical  about 
South  Carolina  that  any  man  should  love  her  on  that 
account,  or  indulge  in  such  heroics  as  have  been  ever 
found  in  her  inflated  oratory?  Who  reads  her  history  now? 
what  is  there  in  it  to  induce  a  man  to  read  it?  what  will 
the  world  care  about  it  when  South  Carolina,  by  her  sever- 
ance from  the  great  historic  nationality,  shall  have  utterly 
lost  what  little  dignity  she  may  have  once  possessed  as  a 
member  of  it. 

But  there  are  thoughts  here  that  will  come  in  better  in 
another  place.  Beturn  we  to  the  map  of  Greece,  and  to 
the  more  direct  comparison  we  wish  to  make  between  her 
history  and  our  own.  Observe  that  graceful  outline,  and 
the  completeness  of  the  Hellenic  territory  that  is  embraced 
by  it.  How  compactly  it  lies  between  the  JEgean  and 
Ionian  seas !  Study  the  beautiful  proportion  of  its  northern 
and  southern  tracts,  apparently  divided,  yet  most  inti- 
mately united,  by  the  interflowing  gulf  of  Corinth.  It 
made,  or  should  have  made,  Peloponnesus  one  with  iEtolia 
and  Bceotia,  even  as  the  Ohio  joins  in  closest  union  Ken- 
tucky and  Indiana — in  both  cases  the  internal  division, 
when  it  is  a  natural  one,  strengthening  the  outside  all- 
embracing  bond.   That  fair  gulf  of  Corinth,  so  made  by 


God  for  friendly  intercourse  and  peaceful  commerce 
between  the  sections  of  one  great  nationality,  bow  many 
fierce  naval  combats  did  it  witness,  not  in  defense  of  Greece 
against  a  foreign  foe,  but  all  for  "State  rights,"  that  ever- 
lasting bane  of  Grecian  welfare.  It  makes  us  think  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  of  the  blood,  that  for  the  same  accursed 
reason,  is  now  staining  its  waters. 

Such  was  the  map  of  Greece  continental,  with  its  com- 
merce inviting  coasts,  its  winding  bays,  its  interpenetrat- 
ing rivers,  whilst  circling  round,  in  glad  profusion,  lay 
those  many  "isles  of  the  sea,"  which,  in  Scripture,  gave 
their  name  to  this  whole  Mediterranean  region  of  the  far 
West,  as  it  seemed  in  the  Jewish  Geography.  All  belonged 
to  the  Sons  of  Javan.  Their  inhabitants  were  all  of  one 
lineage,  all  speaking  Greek,  all  having  their  local  mytho- 
logies interwoven  with  the  old  national  traditions — the 
stories  of  their  earlier  settlements  and  their  later  coloniza- 
tions— making  each  part  akin  to  every  other,  even  as  the 
man  of  Ohio  looks  back  to  the  old  homestead  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  the  life  of  the  prairie  mingles  with  it  remini- 
scences of  the  mountain  and  the  sea. 

Such  was  Greece,  historically  and  geographically.  What 
prevented  it  from  becoming  a  mighty  and  beneficent 
power  in  the  earth,  instead  of  being,  as  it  really  was,  a 
political  hell?  It  was  the  same  evil  influence  that  has 
troubled  us  since  the  beginning  of  our  national  existence, 
and  which,  unless  removed,  will  surely  bring  upon  us  the 
same  political  doom. 

Eead  those  volumes  of  Grote  that  so  minutely  detail  the 
history  of  Greece  from  the  days  of  Pericles  to  those  of 
Alexander.  What  a  mournful  record  of  human  woe,  as 
caused  by  human  depravity !  There  is  many  an  exquisite 
digression  on  the  literature  and  philosophy  of  Hellas — her 
art,  her  poetry,  her  eloquence.  In  reading  these  we  are 
apt  to  forget  the  awful  scenes  of  misery  in  the  midst  of 
which  these  captivating  features  had  their  strange  exis- 
tence. But  look  at  the  record  again,  and  one  thing  meets 
us  every  where.    It  is  war — war — war — unceasing  war,  in 


13 


its  most  unrelenting  forms, — not  foreign  wars,  such  as 
may  more  than  compensate  for  all  their  evils  by  the  more 
heroic  tone  they  impart  to  the  national  and  patriotic  spirit, 
but  bloody  dissensions  between  the  inhabitants  of  petty 
states  lying  in  nearest  contiguity — such  wars,  all  the  more 
ferocious  from  the  fact  that  they  were  between  the  men 
who  spoke  the  same  language — all  the  more  destitute  of 
any  alleviating  courtesies  by  reason  of  the  near  factious 
hatreds  in  which  they  had  their  origin.  Such  was  the  con- 
dition of  this  miserable  land  for  a  period  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years.  Such  a  state  of  things  has  ever  existed 
between  contiguous  peoples  separated  by  artificial  bounda- 
ries, having  the  same  origin,  speaking  the  same  language, 
but  whose  petty  sectional  pride — all  the  stronger,  often,  in 
proportion  to  its  pettiness — prevented  them  from  having 
one  common  political  imperium.  Witness  the  never  ceas- 
ing strife  between  Israel  and  Judah — between  Spaniard 
and  Spaniard,  in  Mexico  and  South  America — between 
Anglo  Saxon  in  the  long  wars  of  England  and  Scotland. 
The  latter  is,  perhaps,  the  most  striking  example  of  this 
historical  phenomenon,  unless  we  are  about  to  furnish  one 
still  more  full  of  melancholy  warning  to  the  nations.  Bri- 
tain now  taunts  us  with  fighting  cruelly  for  such  shadows 
as  unity  and  nationality.  She  forgets  her  own  history. 
Her  centuries  of  insular  war,  though  having  far  less  ground 
in  any  historic  growth,  with  nought  to  allege  of  broken 
compacts,  were  all  struggles  to  the  same  end.  True  she 
is  but  patch  work,  after  all,  as  compared  to  our  greater 
historical  symmetry;  she  has  grown  up,  deformed  indeed, 
but  who  shall  venture  to  say  that  her  one  great  nation- 
ality, with  all  its  ugliness,  is  not  better  for  herself,  and  for 
the  world,  than  any  poor  petty  sovereignties  of  Saxon, 
Scotch  and  Irish,  Welch  or  Cornish,  that  might  now  be 
existing  in  its  place.  We  may  thank  God  that  truth  and 
nature  at  last  prevailed  in  erecting  a  beneficent  empire 
out  of  those  miserable  heptarchies,  and  sectional  oligar- 
chies, that  had  no  right  to  exist  as  separate  sovereignties 
when  they  could  not  supply,  either  for  the  inward  common 


14 


weal  or  outward  defense,  those  attributes  of  sovereignty 
which  alone  can  characterize  nations  as  being  truly  "powers 
ordained  of  God" 

To  unhappy  Greece  there  came  one  moment,  most  favor- 
able of  all,  for  establishing  such  a  beneficent  sovereignty. 
There  was  a  time  when  there  might  have  been  laid,  strong 
and  deep,  the  foundations  of  a  true  Hellenic  common- 
wealth that  might  have  been  a  blessing  in  the  earth,  has- 
tening, by  many  centuries,  the  period  of  European  culture 
and  civilization.  It  was  during  and  just  after  the  Persian 
war.  There  was  one  time  before  this,  the  only  time  in  her 
history,  when  Greece  might  be  said  to  have  been  all 
together.  It  was  the  period  of  the  Trojan  crusade ;  but 
that  was  a  romantic,  a  heroic,  instead  of  a  political  one- 
ness. The  invasion  of  Xerxes  again  brought  out  united 
(or  nearly  united)  Greece,  and  this  was  the  crisis  of  their 
history.  They  let  it  pass  without  learning  the  lesson  it 
taught ;  or  their  narrow  local  jealousies  were  stronger  than 
the  clearest  teachings.  There  were  other  favorable  mo- 
ments, but  so  fair  an  opportunity  never  came  again.  As 
they  receded  from  Thermopylae,  every  year  drove  them 
farther  and  farther  from  the  idea  of  national  unity.  Every 
generation  of  this  absurd  state  pride  among  those  petty 
powers  placed  stronger  and  stronger  obstacles  in  the  way. 
When  it  became  the  standing  word,  and  the  "  one  idea  " 
of  the  demagogue,  all  hope  was  gone,  and  foreign  subju- 
gation could  alone  terminate  a  state  of  things  with  whose 
real  horrors  no  despotism  could  hold  comparison. 

There  were  men  in  Greece  who  saw  this,  but  their  efforts 
to  remedy  it  were  unavailing.  Especially  were  they  found 
in  that  state  which  so  much  surpassed  all  the  rest  in  pbilo- 
sophical  and  literary  culture.  The  great  men  of  Athens 
were  ever  national,  even  when  criminally  ambitious.  Her 
very  demagogues  were  more  national  than  those  of  Corinth 
or  Argos.  But  she  had  ever  true  men  full  of  the  Panhel- 
lenic  feeling,  in  distinction  from  the  factious  spouter ;  even 
as  New  England  has  her  Webster  and  her  Everett  to  put 
in  contrast  with  the  Woods  and  Yallandighams  of  our  own 


15 


day.  Athens  was  charged  with  ambition ;  she  was  said  to 
be  aiming  at  imperium  and  consolidation.  This  was  ever 
the  stale  cry  of  the  small  men  of  Megara,  or  the  Free 
Traders  of  Corinth,  or  the  stupid  men  of  Boeotia,  or  the 
brutal  Helot  drivers  that  talked state  rights,"  and  prac- 
ticed despotism  in  Sparta.  Athens  was  ambitious,  but  she 
was,  at  the  same  time,  truly  generous  and  national.  It  is 
true  she  gloried  in  the  Attic  name ;  and  well  she  might, 
for  with  that  name  is  now  associated  our  highest  thought 
of  Grecian  culture;  but  dearer  still  to  this  high  souled 
people  was  the  Hellenic  unity.  Athens  stood  nearly  alone 
in  her  Panhellenism ;  she  was  reviled  as  Massachusetts  is 
now  reviled,  and  her  efforts  were  unavailing.  Greece  never 
rose  out  of  that  political  chaos  which  was  ever  in  such 
strange  contrast  with  her  ethnological  and  geographical 
unity.  She  never  became  what  one  people,  of  one  race,  of 
one  language,  and  embraced  by  the  same  natural  geogra- 
phical boundaries,  ever  ought  to  be — one  nation  historically 
born — one  political  organization  having  one  common  life 
— each  part  with  its  acknowledged  local  rights,  but  hold- 
ing, as  the  most  sacred  of  all  "  state  rights"  the  right  of 
each  part  in  every  other  part,  and  in  the  whole. 

Instead  of  this  we  have  an  historical  picture,  the  most 
painful,  perhaps,  that  history  ever  presented.  It  was  war 
unceasing,  war  everywhere — semper  ubique  — in  every  divi- 
sion, and  subdivision,  of  this  unhappy  land.  Nothing 
comes  nearer  to  that  horrid  representation  which  Hobbes 
would  give  us  as  the  natural  state  of  mankind :  Bellum, 
neque  hoc  simpliciter,  sed  bellum  omnium  in  omnes — "  war, 
and  not  that  simply,  but  a  war  of  all  against  all"  (Hobbes, 
De  Oive,  part  I,  chap.  1,  sec.  11.)  This,  says  the  philoso- 
pher of  Malmsbury,  is  the  state  of  nature ;  this,  unless 
checked  by  some  leviathan  power,  is  the  ordinary  condi- 
tion of  mankind.  This  is  the  rule,  he  says ;  its  absence  is 
the  exception,  tempus  reliquum  PAX  vocatur,  "  the  remain- 
ing time  is  called  peace.''  In  Greece,  however,  this  tem- 
pus  reliquum  was  reduced  almost  to  an  infinitessimal. 
Open  Grote's  history,  anywhere,  especially  in  those  most 


16 


minute  and  crowded  details  that  fill  its  last  six  volumes, 
and  this  BeUum  hotridum,  this  BeUum  omnium  in  omnes 
meets  you  at  every  page.  What  makes  it  the  more  melan- 
choly is,  that  it  was  ever  professedly  in  search  of  peace 
Irene,  O  Irene,  Goddess  fair  !• 

(fs^vorar?)  (3acfi\si<x  &sd 

The  Chicago  Convention  does  not  clamor  more  loudly 
for  peace,  though  far  less  sincerely,  than  did  the  popular 
orators  and  comedians  of  Athens,  though  they  were  ever 
the  men  who  stood  in  the  way  of  peace,  or  made  it  but  the 
occasion  of  a  still  more  cruel  war.  Irene  never  came. 
There  was  no  peace  to  the  factious  brawlers  of  state  sove- 
reignty. Greece  was  "like  a  troubled  sea  that  cannot 
rest,  whose  waters  were  ever  casting  up  mire  and  foulness." 

It  was  war  for  the  most  of  the  time  in  which  every  sec- 
tion became  involved — war  all  the  time,  of  some  part,  or 
parts,  against  some  other  parts.  Ever  fighting — ever  treat- 
ing— the  most  solemn  articles  of  everlasting  amity  hardly 
sealed  before  broken — truces  without  number — armistices 
for  months,  for  years,  for  ten  years,  for  thirty  years,  and 
then,  at  it  again,  in  less  than  thirty  days — such  was  this 
fair  land  which  we  are  accustomed  mainly  to  think  of  as 
the  abode  of  literature  and  the  arts.  O,  the  black  cloud 
of  perjury  that  was  continually  ascending  to  Heaven! 
O,  the  broken  oaths,  that  fill  every  page  of  Grecian  history ! 
May  we  not  learn  something  from  this?  What  faith  in 
treaties,  or  in  any  confederacies,  general  or  partial,  if  the 
great  oath-bound  constitution  of  the  United  States  is  gone ! 
For  nearly  eighty  years  have  we  been  lifting  up  our  hands 
to  Heaven  and  saying,  "so  help  us  the  everliving  God," 
if  we  fail  to  keep  every  jot  and  tittle  of  this  law.  Can  we 
ever  have  a  treaty  stronger  than  that,  more  solemn,  more 
secure,  than  that? 

And  not  only  wars  with  each  other,  or  between  con- 
tending sections,  but  factions  in  every  state — "seditions, 

*  Aristophanis,  Pax,  975. 


17 


privy  conspiracies  and  rebellions  "  everywhere.  ^ot  a  clay, 
not  a  moment  without  them,  in  some  devoted  city.  The 
lesser  tumults  were  the  natural  results  of  the  greater. 
Each  warring  state  had  its  party,  or  factions,  in  every 
other.  There  were  copperheads  in  democratic  Athens 
that  were  sympathisers  with  the  Spartan  oligarchy.  There 
were  conservatives,  too,  so-called,  who  affected  to  admire 
the  "high-toned"  chivalry  of  the  Lacedemonians,  with 
all  the  falsities  of  their  base  lying  character,  whilst  they 
despised  the  enthusiastic,  at  times  turbulent,  yet  ever 
generous  and  Greece-loving,  demos  of  Athens.  And  so 
there  came  to  be  an  Attic  party  and  a  Spartan  party  in 
Boeotia,  a  Corinthian  party  in  Argos,  a  foreign  Persian 
party,  and  later  still  a  Macedonian  party,  a  Phillipiz- 
ing  party,  in  every  petty  district  that  claimed  to  be  a 
sovereignty  in  this  doomed  and  distracted  land.  Are  we 
not  justified  in  calling  it  a  political  hell? 

The  remedy  was  ever  patent,  ever  at  hand,  could  there 
have  been  found  wisdom  and  patriotism  for  its  application. 
The  few  very  great  men  of  Greece,  and  especially  of 
Athens,  were  ever  national.  In  proportion  to  their  real 
greatness  had  they  the  Panhellenic  spirit.  But  they  were 
ever  overpowered  by  the  much  larger  number  of  ordinary 
great  men,  or  of  little  great  men,  who  found  this  Panhel- 
lenic scale  too  large  for  their  measurement,  and  who  could 
only  hope  to  figure  on  the  smaller  stage  of  these  local 
sovereignties.  As  with  us,  so  in  Greece ;  the  truly  great 
were  ever  national,  the  demagogue  ever  factious,  local 
and  municipal.  But  the  TVebsters  were  few;  the  Woods 
and  the  Yallandighams  were  numerous  and  noisy. 

The  remedy  was  in  union,  not  in  mere  confederacies 
which  each  party  could  disrupt  at  pleasure,  and  which 
could,  at  best,  be  no  better  than  their  oft-broken  treaties, 
but  a  political  organization,  such  that  the  one  life  of  the 
whole  should  be  in  every  part,  and  the  same  life  of  every 
part  pervading  the  whole,  so  grown  together  by  the  organic 
power  of  history,  that  a  hurt  in  one  place  should  hurt  all 
over,  and  be  felt  to  the  quick  in  every  portion  of  this  cor- 
3 


18 


porate  vitality.  History  alone  would  do  this  ;  but  history 
might  have  been  suffered  to  have  its  way.  It  alone  could 
make  a  nation,  and  give  the  inward  law ;  human  states- 
men might  give  the  outward  form,  and  conventionally  shape 
it,  as  time,  and  expediency,  and  national  culture,  might 
demand.  He  "  who  determines  the  times  before  appointed, 
and  the  bounds  of  the  people's  habitations,"  had  done  his 
part  for  this,  in  making  Grecian  geography,  and  Grecian 
ethnology,  and  the  one  Greek  language,  what  they  were, 
peculiar  and  unique  among  "  the  jjowers  ordained  of  God" 
on  earth.  All  things  were  ready  for  a  political  imperium, 
more  intelligent,  more  beneficent,  than  any  that  ever  rose 
in  the  ancient  world.  There  was  the  great  occasion 
already  mentioned;  there  were  other  occasions  when 
Greece  might  have  become  such  a  nation  politically,  as 
she  already  was  physically,  had  it  not  been  for  an  ever 
thwarting  power  which  God  had  left  free,  that  peoples, 
and  nations,  might  have  their  responsibilities  as  well  as 
individual  men.  Outward  historical  circumstances,  too, 
such  as  the  exhaustions  of  the  long  Peloponnessian  war, 
and  the  evident  growth  of  foreign  intrigue  as  an  element  in 
Grecian  politics,  must  have  brought  it  home  to  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  most  stolid  demagogues,  that  peace,  for  which 
they  were  ever  clamoring,  ever  making,  ever  breaking, 
could  be  found  only  in  a  nationality  having  all  power  for 
inward  security  and  outward  defense.  But  this  thwarting 
power  was  ever  there,  ever  starting  up  at  the  moment  when 
the  good  genius  of  Panhellenism  seemed  to  have  found  its 
opportunity.  The  seed  from  which  it  derived  its  strength 
had  been  early  sown.  It  had  grown  with  their  growth, 
until  it  became  a  diremptive  force  against  which  no  power 
of  cohesion  could  avail.  It  was  antagonistic,  not  only  to 
national  unity,  but  even  to  the  lower  idea  of  confederate 
union.  Whilst  it  prevented  all  true  organic  national  life, 
it  was  ever  diremptive  of  any  attempts  at  alliance,  partial 
or  general,  that  might  wear  its  semblance,  or  seem  to  take 
its  place.  Disorganization,  disintegration,  was  inherent 
in  its  very  idea.   It  was  a  centrifugal  force  ever  overcom- 


19 


ing  any  central  attraction,  and  ever  working  on  to  one 
result — anarchy,  total  and  remediless,  except  as  stayed, 
and  stayed  alone,  by  foreign  subjugation. 

This  fatal  element  in  the  Grecian  character  is  repre- 
sented by  a  single  word,  sparingly  found  in  the  beginning 
of  their  annals,  but  growing  more  frequent  as  we  near 
the  mournful  catastrophes — mournful  in  their  disappoint- 
ments, but  welcome  in  their  beneficent  mission — that  for- 
ever closed  the  page  of  this  sad  Grecian  history.  It  is  the 
word  attonomia  (autonomy).  It  is  not  to  be  found  in 
Homer,  nor  any  thing  like  it  that  might  be  adapted  to 
epic  verse.  It  is  rare  in  Herodotus.  It  becomes  more 
frequent  in  Thucydides.  It  meets  us  on  every  page  of 
that  most  sad  and  wearisome  history  that  is  found  in 
Xenophon's  Hellenica — such  a  history  as  may  yet  be  writ- 
ten of  the  debris  of  our  own  great  American  republic. 

In  this  last  sad  period  of  the  Grecian  states,  no  spouter 
of  the  agora,  or  stump  orator,  as  we  would  call  him,  could 
make  a  speech  without  this  magic  word  forming  the  intro- 
duction and  the  peroration,  the  argument  and  the  appeal,  of 
every  discourse.  It  was  the  watchword  of  every  factionist ; 
it  was  the  plea  of  every  lesser  state  in  its  defense,  whilst  it 
was  the  standing  pretext  of  every  powerful  one  in  its 
aggression.  It  was  the  irresistible  cant  of  the  times ;  it 
entered  into  all  the  gabble  of  their  wretched  diplomacy  ; 
if  they  had  had  newspapers  they  would  have  been  rilled 
with  it  from  end  to  end. 

But  what  did  they  mean  by  autonomy  ?  The  word 
sounds  fair  enough.  It  may  be  rendered  independence.  It 
is  etymologically,  self-government,  though  having  still  that 
same  ambiguity  that  lurks  in  our  modern  phrase,  and 
which  will  allow  it  to  have  two  meanings  in  polar  opposi- 
tion— self-governing,  or  self-governed — a  ruling  or  a  ruled, 
a  rational  or  an  animal  selfishness.  But  it  is  no  question 
of  abstract  etymology.  We  know  well  what  they  meant 
by  it.  Autonomia,  as  used  by  the  ancient  Yallandighams, 
is  precisely  synonymous  with  "  state  rights,"  or  "  state 
sovereignty,"  in  the  mouth  of  the  modern.   They  are  not 


20 


merely  co-ordinate  but  parallel  throughout.  Autonomia 
was  "state  rights"  in  its  lowest  and  most  mischievous 
sense ;  not  the  right  of  each  portion  to  have  what  belongs 
to  it,  in  the  general  political  organization,  whether  as 
coming  from  nature,  or  prescription,  or  precise  enactment ; 
for  in  that  sense  each  ward  has  its  rights  as  well  as  each 
city  ;  each  family  has  its  rights,  its  reserved  rights,  and 
each  individual ;  but  it  was  the  right  of  each  part  to  its 
own  petty  sovereignty,  however  injurious  that  sovereignty 
might  be  to  the  whole,  or  however  mischievous  it  might 
be  to  the  better  rights,  and  the  truer  interests,  of  the  petty 
portion  that  claimed  it.  It  was  not  that  great  and  bene- 
ficent "state  right"  which  God  and  nature  had  designed 
for  each  portion,  however  small,  of  this  unique,  geographi- 
cal territory,  and  for  whose  security  a  great  yielding  of 
local  independence,  with  its  miserable  perquisites,  would 
be  the  cheapest  price  that  could  be  paid.  In  other  words, 
it  was  not  the  right  of  each  state  in  the  great  nationality — 
the  precious  right  of  each  state,  and  of  the  people  of  each 
state,  in  the  whole  and  every  other,  involving  the  recipro- 
cal right  of  the  whole,  and  of  the  people  of  the  whole,  in 
every  part.  It  was  not  the  inestimable  right  of  iuter-citi- 
zenship — the  right  of  Phocis  in  Athens  and  Thebes,  and 
in  all  the  beautiful  isles  of  the  iEgean — but  the  right  of 
Phocis  to  govern  her  little  self,  with  a  loss  of  all  the  value, 
and  all  the  glory,  that  would  come  from  being  a  member 
of  such  a  nationality.  This  latter  was  a  statue  right  too 
transcendental  for  the  ancient  demagogue ;  and  so  it  is  for 
the  modern.  It  cannot  be  estimated  by  their  arithmetic. 
The  local  and  the  petty,  and  how  easy  it  is  to  excite  men 
about  it !  this  they  can  understand.  That  that  which  is 
small  in  itself  becomes  still  smaller  when  separated  from 
a  whole  that  might  have  imparted  to  it  some  of  its  own 
dignity — this  is  altogether  beyond  them.  Phocis  and  Elis 
had  all  their  worth  as  members  of  Greece.  So  Illinois  has 
a  dignity  as  a  portion  of  the  American  nation.  Separate 
from  that,  what  a  figure  is  it  likely  to  make  in  history, 
even  though  it  might,  for  a  time,  preserve  unwarpt  the 


21 


purely  arbitrary  straight  lines  that  divide  it  from  Indiana 
and  Wisconsin  !  It  falls  far  below  Portugal  and  Siam  ;  it 
is  immensely  outranked,  historically,  by  the  smallest  can- 
ton in  Switzerland ;  we  may  well  doubt  whether,  in  the 
world's  knowledge  of  it  as  a  separate  sovereignty,  it  will 
ever  reach  the  fame  of  the  Mohawks,  and  of  the  Six 
Nations. 

It  is  this  transcending  right  of  each  part  in  the  whole 
and  in  every  other  part,  this  precious  right  of  inter-citizen- 
ship, as  we  have  called  it,  that  is  so  much  overlooked  in 
discussing  the  question  of  this  rebellion,  and  the  relative 
attitudes  of  the  parties.  There  is  an  error%  here,  an  over- 
sight, on  the  part  of  the  most  loyal.  Even  whilst  firmly 
maintaining  that  the  South  is  wrong,  that  she  has  broken 
the  national  compact,  we  still,  somehow,  concede  to  them 
a  position  of  self-defense,  locally,  if  not  politically — in  re 
if  not  in  jure — in  fact  if  not  in  right.  They  are  righting 
pro  aris  et  focis,  they  say,  4 'for  their  altars  and  their 
hearths,"  for  their  own  homes,  their  own  soil.  We  concede 
this  relatively,  and  to  a  certain  extent,  whilst,  at  the  same 
time,  saying  that  they  had  no  business  to  be  thus  righting 
for  separation  ;  no  one  had  any  thought  of  harming  them, 
or  of  taking  what  belonged  to  them.  Now,  by  such 
appearance  of  self-defense,  even  though  it  be  a  wrongful 
one,  they  get  a  vantage  ground  in  feeling,  a  sentimental 
prestige,  to  which  they  have  no  right.  It  is  not  on  our 
part  a  mere  claim  for  the  fulfillment  of  a  contract.  This 
is  only  a  part,  and  the  smallest  part  of  the  argument. 
They  have  not  only  unlawfully  separated  from  us,  but 
they  have  taken  what  belongs  to  us  as  well  as  to  them- 
selves. It  was  our  arm  et  foci,  even  as  the  homes  and 
hearths  of  the  North  were  theirs.  It  is,  on  their  part,  not 
a  war  of  self-defense,  but  of  spoliation.  It  is  the  nation 
that  is  defending  itself  against  them.  It  is  the  loyal  parts 
that  are  kept  out  of  their  otvn,  out  of  their  "state  rights," 
their  most  valuable  state  rights,  and  they  are  fighting  to 
get  them  back  from  the  robbers  who  have  seized  them  as 
their  lawless  prey.  The  man  of  Massachusetts  had  a  right 


22 


of  citizenship  in  Virginia,  and  that  right  he  esteems  of 
great  value*  He  never  got  it  even  from  the  federal  consti- 
tution. It  is  confirmed,  indeed,  by  compact,  but  that  is 
only  collateral  security.  It  is  older  than  any  such  com- 
pact. It  gave  rise  to  that  compact.  The  federal  constitu- 
tion would  never  have  been,  had  it  not  been  for  this  pre- 
vious inter-citizenship  constituting  this  previous  nationality. 
It  antedates  the  separation  from  Great  Britain.  The  men 
who  took  part  in  that  struggle  never  meant  to  lose  by  it 
so  valuable  a  right  as  this.  They  never  intended  that  the 
severance  from  the  distant  motherland  should  make  us 
aliens  to  each  other,  or  shut  up  by  themselves  the  inhabi- 
tants of  each  petty  colonial  district,  with  such  a  vast  dimin- 
ution of  the  rights,  which  before  came  from  the  one 
common  British  citizenship. 

If  the  letter  of  the  constitution  is  against  such  a  doc- 
trine, history  is  far  more.  The  man  of  Plymouth  has  the 
same  right  in  Virginia  as  the  man  of  Jamestown.  He  has 
the  same  right  to  buy  lands  there,  to  hold  them  as  resi- 
dent or  non-resident  owner,  to  settle  on  them  when  he 
pleases,  to  reserve  them  for  his  children,  and  to  make  such 
children,  if  he  pleases,  future  inhabitants  of  that  state. 
For  this  he  is  justified  in  fighting.  For  this  original  "  state 
right "  he  is  now  fighting.  Every  Northern  soldier  now  in 
Virginia  has  a  right  to  be  there  even  if  the  necessity  of 
war  did  not  send  them  there.  Any  conditions  or  modifi- 
cations that  Virginia  might  claim  to  impose  on  such  rights 
of  soil  and  citizenship,  are  only  by  compact,  and  that  too 
ever  with  this  restriction,  that  no  terms  can  be  imposed  on 
persons  out  of  her  bounds,  to  prevent  them  from  coining 
within  and  exercising  all  such  rights,  that  are  not  equally 
imposed  upon  those  already  there.  The  owners  of  these 
franchises  have  a  right  to  contend,  even  unto  blood, 
against  their  ever  passing  under  the  power  of  a  strictly 
foreign  government  which  may  deny  or  change  them  as  it 
pleases. 

What  makes  the  opposing  claim  the  more  absurd  is  the 
fact  that  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of  many 


23 


of  these  usurping  states  came  from  others  in  the  Xorth  and 
East.  In  some  of  them  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  a 
majority  are  in  this  very  condition.  All  they  have  there 
is  rrom  the  exercise  of  the  same  original  "  state  right " 
which  they  now  deny.  A  great  part  of  the  United  States 
has  been  settled  by  it,  and  would  have  remained  a  wilder- 
ness, or  a  land  of  poor  straggling  hordes,  without  it.  Shall 
they  shut  the  doors  to  all  who  choose  to  come  after  them 
by  the  same  right?  Shall  Yankees  settle  Arkansas  and 
Louisiana,  and  then  give  this  as  a  name  of  opprobrium, 
and  treat  as  alien  enemies  all  who  may  see  fit  to  follow 
them  ?  Such  robbery  and  embezzlement  as  this  they  call 
defending  their  homes,  fighting  pro  aris  et  focis.  If  right 
to  one  it  is  right  to  all,  and  then  to  what  an  utter  absurd- 
ity does  this  doctrine  of  sovereignty  lead  us  ?  Kansas  is 
admitted  to  the  Union  with  barely  enough  inhabitants  to 
send  a  member  to  Congress.  They  may  immediately 
declare  themselves  a  sovereign  state,  with  all  powers 
inherent  in  the  idea,  thus  virtually  claiming  for  themselves 
alone  all  that  vast  unsettled  territory.  They,  too,  if  such 
a  claim  were  denied,  are  fighting  pro  aris  et  focis. 

Again,  there  is  not  only  the  individual  right  of  each 
state,  and  of  the  inhabitants  of  each  state,  in  every  other, 
but  also  the  claim  of  their  common  representative,  the 
general  government  of  the  whole  nationalit}\  The  United 
States  possess  not  only  political  jurisdiction,  but  the  right 
of  soil  in  all  places  used  for  forts,  arsenals,  armories,  ship- 
yards, and  other  works  of  the  common  self-defense.  They 
have  been  paid  for  from  the  common  treasury.  The  deeds 
of  sale  are  on  record  in  the  national  offices.  Such  was 
the  state  of  things  at  Norfolk  and  Harper's  Ferry.  Vir- 
ginia seizes  both,  drives  out  the  lawful  occupants,  and 
converts  them  to  her  own  rebellious  uses.  She  commits  this 
atrocious  burglary,  like  a  felon  in  the  night,  and  then,  she, 
too,  if  resisted,  is  defending  her  sacred  soil ;  she  asks  the 
world's  sympathy  as  one  who  is  fighting  pro  aris  et  focis! 

It  is  astonishing  how  this  idea  of  inter-citizenship  is  lost 
sight  of,  though  the  right  of  the  war  is  strenuously  main- 


24 


tained  by  us  on  other  and  tenable  grounds.  We  of  the 
JSorth,  it  must  be  repeated,  are  fighting  not  only  justly, 
as  for  the  enforcement  of  a  violated  contract,  but  in  actual 
self-defense  to  prevent  an  ouster  from  a  long  and  acknow- 
ledged possession.  Let  us  keep  the  great  truth  steadily 
before  the  mind :  The  right  of  these  states  in  each  other — 
the  right  of  each  state,  and  of  the  people  of  each  state,  in 
every  other  state — their  right  to  all  the  benefits  which 
flow  from  their  common  nationality,  created  by  history 
and  confirmed  by  convention — this  is  the  great  and  invalu- 
able "  state  right."  Every  individual  holds  it,  not  from 
any  grant  or  purchase  made  by  the  state  in  which  he  lives 
— not  from  any  concession  from  the  states  collectively,  or 
anything  representing  them — not  by  any  reservation  made 
on  his  behalf — but  from  that  original  birthright  citizen- 
ship which  made  the  states,  the  nation,  and  the  union,  as 
all  alike  one  harmonious  indivisible  work  proceeding  from 
one  and  the  same  working  power.  c*  We  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  do  ordain  and  establish  this  constitution  for 
ourselves  and  our  posterity."  There  spoke  this  one  ancient 
indivisible  sovereignty  in  peaceful  convention;  it  is  the 
same  voice  that  is  now  uttered  on  the  battlefield,  amidst 
"confused  noise,  and  garments  rolled  in  blood." 

This  vital  fundamental  idea  cannot  be  too  often  repeated, 
or  too  strongly  enforced.  It  was  this  original  inter-citizen- 
t  ship  that  made  the  nation.  It  was  the  seed  from  which  it 
grew;  it  was  the  law,  idea,  or  formal  cause,  shaping  the 
outer  growth,  and  giving  it  just  such  form  as  it  in  time 
assumed.  It  made  the  early  congresses;  it  was  the  bond 
and  strength  of  the  Eevolution  that  severed  our  new 
Anglo-Saxonism  from  the  old ;  it  gave  rise  to  the  Articles 
of  Confederation ;  it  demanded,  for  its  more  adult  vigor, 
and  its  just  development,  the  later  stronger  constitu- 
tion, commencing,  "  We  the  people"  and  so  that  consti- 
tution was  born  as  its  legitimate  historical  offspring.  It 
has  ever  since,  for  nearly  eighty  years,  been  giving  con- 
sistency to  all  the  national  acts.  It  has  made  history  for 
us ;  it  has  made  war  and  peace ;  it  has  been  acknowledged 


25 


by  foreign  nationalities  to  the  ignoring  of  any  other  citi- 
zenship, or  any  other  nationality  in  this  vast  territory.  It 
has  settled  the  prairie  and  the  wilderness ;  it  has  built  great 
works  of  national  defense,  and  national  utility,  that  with- 
out it  never  would  have  been  in  existence.  In  all  this,  the 
outward  action,  the  mere  mode  of  doing,  may  have  been 
guided  by  conventional  forms,  but  these  give  it  not  its 
sanction.  It  had  life  in  itself — life  coming  from  an  older 
and  a  higher  source. 

Mr  Lincoln  will  long  be  remembered  for  his  terse  declara- 
tion of  this  great  truth.  "It  was  the  nation  that  made 
the  Constitution,  and  not  the  Constitution  the  nation," 
says  he,  with  a  concise  sagacity,  worthy  of  Aristotle.  The 
nation  was  before  the  constitution,  and  without  the  former's 
pre-existence,  the  latter  never  would  have  been.  It  was 
the  constitution  of  a  nation,  made  by  a  nation,  and  for  a 
nation.  It  was  not  philosophy,  nor  abstract  reasoning, 
perhaps,  but  that  clear  common  sense  for  which  Mr  Lin- 
coln is  distinguished  above  other  men  of  our  day,  that  sent 
him  at  once,  and  intuitively,  to  the  conclusion. 

The  shallow  declaimers  at  Chicago  tell  us  that  the  states 
made  the  constitution — organically  as  well  as  formally ? 
they  would  say,  if  they  could  understand  the  distinction. 
The  parts  made  the  whole;  and  so  the  cities,  towns  and 
people  made  the  states.  To  ignorance  like  their  own  this 
may  seem  plausible.  But  they  forget  that  these  states, 
too,  are  made  of  parts,  that  there  is  no  special  historical 
"sacredness"  in  their  bounding  lines,  and  that  when  they 
talk  of  the  states  as  certain  magic  corporations,  separate 
from  the  people  of  these  states,  they  are  talking  transcen- 
dental nonsense,  as  they  would  call  it  if  used  by  others, 
and  applied  to  the  far  more  historical  national  whole. 

Parts  may  make  a  sum,  an  aggregate,  a  mass  of  masses  ; 
but  they  cannot,  of  themselves,  make  a  true  whole.  The 
difference  between  the  ideas  is  fundamental.  There  is  a 
sense,  a  high  sense,  in  which  it  may  be  said,  that  a  true 
whole  is  ever  before  its  parts,  potentially  so  in  nature,  and 
Virtually  so  in  time.  It  is  not  a  mere  metaphysical  abstrac- 
4 


26 


tion  that  we  are  here  contending  for.  It  is  true  in  physics ; 
it  is  true  in  politics.  A  real  organic  whole  must  determine 
its  own  wholeness,  and  its  parts,  as  parts  of  such  a  whole. 
"Without  this  they  are  not  parts  of  anything,  but  mere 
contiguities.  To  make  them  parts  in  the  sense  of  member- 
sli  ip,  they  need  something  previous,  shaping  their  relation- 
ship to  itself  and  to  each  other;  and  this  we  cannot  say  too 
often,  is  the  work  of  History — of  the  great  world-movement, 
obeying  the  Higher  Intelligence  in  originating,  organizing, 
consummating,  the  earthly  "powers  ordained  of  God." 

The  states  make  the  nation.  This  is  true  as  material 
cause.  They  are  partially  the  material  (ex  quo)  out  of 
which  the  nation  is  made,  just  as  the  more  local  subdivi- 
sions in  the  last  resort,  or  the  individual  inhabitants,  make 
the  state.  But  where  is  the  formal  cause,  the  efficient 
cause — for  here  both  these  causalities  unite — in  other 
words,  what  draws  the  parts  together?  What  gives  them 
value  and  relation  as  parts  of  such  a  whole  ?  The  merest 
accidents  may  make  a  sum  or  mass  of  contiguities,  but  u 
true  wlwle,  can  only  come  from  an  organic  life — in  other 
words,  a  previous  tvlioleness.  There  is  a  metaphysics 
belonging  to  the  state,  and  men  must  not  sneer  at  it, 
nor  trifle  with  it,  if  they  would  avoid  the  most  serious 
practical  consequences. 

Certain  editors  affect  to  laugh  at  Mr.  Lincoln's  "crude 
idea;"  but  they  are  as  incapable  of  appreciating'its  practi- 
cal shrewdness,  its  irresistible  common  sense,  as  they  are 
of  understanding  its  deep  philosophy.  The  national  being 
comes  not  from  any  mere  conventional  arrangements, 
claiming  either  to  make  it,  or  to  unmake  it,  as  they  please. 
It  is  "God  that  hath  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves." 
Generations  that  are  past,  generations  yet  to  come,  have 
an  interest  in  this  work  as  well  as  the  present.  This 
national  being  is  the  cause  of  such  conventionalities,  and 
not  their  effect.  It  holds  in  political  philosophy,  as  well 
as  in  chemistry.  Everywhere  in  the  organic  world,  whether 
physical  or  historical,  the  life,  according  to  its  more  or  less 
complex  law,  builds  up  the  organization,  instead  of  the 


27 


organization  creating  the  life.  Very  different  from  this, 
is  a  mere  outside  union,  that  may  come  together  and 
separate  as  accident  determines.  The  latter  has  not  even 
the  lowest  form  of  vitality.  It  falls  below  that  of  the 
polypus.  Out  it  into  as  many  segments  as  you  please, 
and  each  one  becomes  a  miserable  individual  polypus 
capable  of  being  dissected,  in  the  same  way,  and  so  on, 
ad  infinitum. 

This  national  life  of  ours,  after  going  through  its  embryo 
colonial  state,  has  been  deepened  by  eighty  years  organic 
growth.  We  are  beginning  now  to  understand  how  deep 
it  is.  The  sharp  pain  we  feel  at  the  stab  which  has  been 
given  to  its  vitality,  shows  that  we  are  alive  all  over.  It 
is  the  pang  of  dreaded  dissolution,  and  all  this  the  more 
terrible  because  a  true  state  is  not  made  to  die ;  death  is 
not  natural  to  it.  "  The  state,"  says  Cicero,  is  formed  for 
eternity :  Debet  enim  constitute!,  sic  .esse  civitas  tit  ceterna 
sit.  How  graphic  as  well  as  how  profound !  "  and  so,"  he 
proceeds  to  say,  "  the  state  undergoes  no  ordinary  natural 
dissolution  like  a  man,  but  must  be  utterly  extinguished 
and  blotted  out  by  violence ;  it  is  as  if  a  world  had  perished 
and  fallen  into  ruin,"  simile  est  qiiodam  modo  ac  si  omnis 
hie  mundus  intereat  et  concidat* 

If  it  were  death  alone !  But  "  Hell  follows  hard  after." 
What  a  heaving  Tartarus  was  Greece,  when  all  hope  of  a 
true  nationality  was  given  up  !  From  Gorcyra  to  Rhodes, 
from  Byzantium  to  Cyrene,  one  bloody  scene  of  faction, 
"  sedition,  privy  conspiracy,  and  rebellion."  In  the  cities, 
in  the  isles,  in  the  colonies,  banishments,  confiscations, 
ostracisms,  and  cruel  deaths.  The  most  ferocious  parties 
everywhere,  fomented  in  the  smaller  states  by  the  influ- 
ence of  the  larger,  and  ever  kept  alive  in  the  leading  cities 
by  the  continual  presence  of  foreign  emissaries.  With  us 
it  would  be  far  more  like  Satan's  kingdom,  inasmuch  as 
our  states  are  more  numerous,  relatively  more  petty,  and, 
from  the  increased  powers  of  modern  knowledge,  and 
modern  invention,  capable  of  greater  mutual  mischief. 


*  Cicero  Repub.,  Lib.  Ill,  sec.  xxiii. 


28 

We  are  not  prophesying  at  random.  Here  is  onr  old 
guide  book.  The  road  is  all  mapped  out,  the  way  surveyed 
by  which  we  march  to  ruin.  All  the  dire  calamities  of 
Greece  may  be  traced  to  this  word,  autonomia.  The 
rapidity  of  her  downward  course  was  just  in  proportion 
to  its  frequency.  It  became  iu  time  almost  the  only  thing 
that  could  be  heard  amid  the  political  din  of  states  and 
factions.  Iufatuated  Hellas !  It  was  the  last  word  upon 
her  lips.  She  died  repeating  autonomia.  "State  rights  " 
— "  State  sovereignty" — this  was  ever  the  cry  until  auto- 
nomy, and  heteronomy,  the  Grecian  power  at  home,  the 
Grecian  power  abroad,  and  all  hopes  of  Grecian  nation- 
ality, x>erished  forever  in  the  battle  of  Ohseroneia. 

Greece  presented  the  first  great  proof  of  a  fact  of  which 
we  are  now  in  danger  of  furnishing  another  and  more  ter- 
rible •  example  to  the  world.  It  is  the  utter  impossibility 
of  peace,  in  a  territory  made  by  nature  a  geographical 
unity,  inhabited  by  a  people,  or  peoples,  of  one  lineage, 
one  language,  bound  together  in  historical  reminiscences, 
yet  divided  into  petty  sovereign  states  too  small  for  any 
respectable  nationalities  themselves,  and  yet  preventing 
any  beneficent  nationality  as  a  whole.  No  animosities 
have  been  so  fierce  as  those  existing  among  people  thus 
geographically  and  politically  related.  No  wars  Avith  each 
other  have  been  so  cruel ;  no  home  factions  have  been  so 
incessant,  so  treacherous,  and  so  debasing.  The  very  ties 
that  draw  them  near,  only  awaken  occasions  of  strife, 
which  would  not  have  existed  between  tribes  wholly  alien 
to  each  other  in  language  and  religion. 

It  is  easy  now  to  trace  this  rapid  degeneracy  in  Greece, 
and  to  determine  its  causes.  Had  Athens  been  successful 
in  the  long  Peloponnesian  war,  it  might,  perhaps,  have 
been  remedied.  The  success  of  this  most  national  of  all 
the  states  might  have  laid  the  foundation  of  a  Grecian 
imperium — not  of  conquest,  nor  of  monarchy,  but  of  united 
national  institutions  forming  a  noble  commonivealth  in 
which  every  thing  might  have  been  as  free  as  in  generous 
Athens  itself;  for  it  was  a  feature  of  the  times  then,  as  it 


29 


is  now,  that  those  states  whose  domestic  institutions  were 
the  most  despotic,  had  ever  the  most  to  say  of  liberty  and 
independence.  So  among  ourselves ;  it  was  not  in  Massa- 
chusetts, but  in  South  Carolina  and  Mississippi,  that  there 
arose  filibustering  schemes  for  the  deliverance  of  enslaved 
countries,  and  the  cry  of  "  extending  the  area  of  freedom." 
The  noble  Athenian  people,  on  the  other  hand,  ever  showed 
in  all  their  history,  that  their  love  of  individual  freedom 
was  ever  in  harmony  with  the  Panhellenic  passion,  and 
derived  its  purest  inspiration  from  it.  It  was  the  generous 
love  of  all  Greece  to  which,  ambitious  as  Athens  was  of 
Attic  glory,  she  so  often  sacrificed  her  own  prosperity  as  a 
sectional  part. 

After  the  melancholy  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  war, 
the  Grecian  history  becomes  a  rapidly  dissolving  view.  An 
absolute  autonomy  for  every  part,  or  for  any  part,  is  dis- 
covered to  be  impossible.  The  Spartan  alliance,  her 
(fv^ax'id  as  it  was  mildly  called,  is  found  to  be  more  griev- 
ous than  any  attempt  of  Athens  to  establish  a  common 
nationality.  And  now  there  arises  a  new  feature  in  these 
political  complications.  The  plea  of  necessity  comes  in. 
It  presents  itself  just  as  often  as  may  be  demanded  for  the 
convenience  of  the  stronger  power.  Sparta  had  gone  to 
war  for  the  independence  of  the  cities.  She  was  fighting 
for  all  Greece,  the  battle  of  "  state  sovereignty ;"  so  it  was 
said  then,  as  it  is  claimed  for  Jefferson  Davis  now.  But, 
after  the  sad  downfall  of  Athens,  no  one  of  the  weaker 
states  could  be  allowed,  at  pleasure,  to  depart  from  the 
new  Confederacy.  If  any  proposition  of  this  kind  came 
from  Argos,  or  from  the  old  conquered  Messene,  or  from 
any  of  the  "  liberated  isles,"  as  they  were  called  in  the 
Lacedaemonian  cant,  she  made  the  same  answer  that  Jef- 
ferson Davis  gave  to  the  Eemonstrants  of  North  Carolina. 
True  they  were  sovereign  states — had  not  Sparta  fought 
long  and  hard  for  that — but  then,  this  sovereignty,  this 
autonomy,  must  be  properly  understood,  it  must  cease  to 
be  perfect  sovereignty  sometimes,  it  must  keep  itself  within 
some  proper  bounds  of  expediency.  Their  departure  might 


30 


endanger  the  alliance  or  produce  local  inconvenience.  It 
was  bad  to  have  an  enemy,  or  an  independent  state  that 
might  become  an  enemy,  between  Lacedaemon  and  Thebes, 
or  between  Lacedasinon  and  Athens.  And  so  the  state 
rights  of  Corinth  and  Megara  became  just  about  as  valu- 
able, and  as  tenable,  as  those  of  New  Jersey  would  be, 
lying  in  her  petty  sovereignty,  between  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania.  With  these  greater  powers  on  each  side  of 
her,  demanding  transitus  for  purposes  of  war  or  commerce, 
she  will  find  her  own  petty  legislature  a  feeble  defense  to 
her  railroad  grants,  and  her  precious  sovereignty  a  very 
poor  exchange  for  that  invaluable  "  state  right,"  she  once 
possessed  in  all-protecting  nationality.  She  might  protect 
her  own  oyster  men  against  those  of  Delaware.  She  might 
exclude  her  own  niggers  from  her  own  common  schools, 
and  from  her  own  theological  seminaries.  These  high  acts 
of  sovereignty  no  one  might  think  fit  to  dispute  with  her. 
But  she  must  not  assume  to  lay  taxes  on  travel  or  trade 
between  Xew  York  and  Philadelphia,  or  forbid  the  pas- 
sage of  an  army,  if  that  should  be  deemed  necessary.  In 
all  such  cases  it  would  soon  be  found  that  there  were  other 
"  state  rights,"  or  state  conveniences,  coming  in  collision 
with  her  sovereignty,  and,  of  course,  in  the  absence  of  any 
national  regulator,  there  can  be  no  other  arbiter  than  the 
power  of  the  stronger.  The  greater  this  national  regu- 
lator, the  less  motive  for  any  despotic  acts ;  the  farther 
removed  from  narrow  local  jealousies,  the  more  conserva- 
tive of  all  true  and  valuable  rights.  But  this  she  has  lost, 
and  now  she  must  make  most,  of  the  mighty  powers  that 
lie  under  "  her  great  seal."  A  mere  glance  at  the  position 
of  this  state  upon  the  map  (and  we  might  have  taken 
almost  any  other  state  as  well)  is  enough  to  put  to  silence 
all  the  famed  logic  of  Calhoun,  with  every  argument  that 
ever  came  from  that  pestilent  storehouse  of  mischief,  "the 
Virginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions." 

Let  us  look  at  this  matter  carefully.  If  New  Jersey 
always  possessed  this  right  of  sovereignty,  or  if  she  never 
surrendered  it,  or  has  a  reserved  right  to  take  back  what 


31 


she  gave  without  reserve  (although  this  last  supposition 
involves  a  sheer  absurdity)  then,  a  fortiori,  must  she  have 
had  it  during  the  revolution.  It  follows,  then,  that  she 
could  have  refused  confederacy,  or  could  have  withdrawn 
from  it.  She  could  have  made  a  separate  treaty  with 
Great  Britain,  or  she  could  have  stood  alone.  She  could 
have  declared  herself  a  sovereign  power  in  the  earth,  and 
no  other  state  would  have  had  a  right  to  question  it.  She 
could  have  forbidden  Washington  to  cross  the  Delaware 
on  that  cold  Christmas  night  when  he  took  the  Hessians. 
She  could  have  told  him  not  to  put  the  tread  of  his  foreign 
army  upon  her  "  sacred  soil,"  just  as  Maryland  warned 
back  the  regiments  of  Massachusetts  when  speeding  on  to 
the  defense  of  the  national  capital.  If  not,  why  not  ? 
Where  is  the  defect  of  the  argument,  if  there  is  any  sound- 
ness in  these  state  rights  premises  ?  Would  Washington, 
however,  have  respected  such  a  prohibition  ?  Would  other 
parties  ever  have  allowed  it  under  any  plea,  whether  it 
had  been  prescription  or  inherent  sovereignty,  or  that  most 
sacred  thing,  the  Duke  of  York's  land  patent  ? 

But  this  was  a  case  of  necessity,  one  may  say.  Yes, 
and  it  has  been  a  case  of  necessity  ever  since.  It  is  a 
case  of  necessity  now — as  strong  at  this  moment  as  it  was 
in  the  revolution.  For  this  necessity  is  but  the  organic 
law  of  which  we  speak — the  shaping  power  of  history, 
giving  every  thing  its  place  and  proper  sovereignty.  It  is 
God  that  makes  nations.  "He  it  is  that  hath  determined 
the  times  before  appointed,  and  the  bouuds  of  their  habi- 
tations." The  "powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God." 
We  have  quoted  these  texts  before,  but  they  can  bear  to 
be  often  preached  from.  Paul  is  a  better  authority  here 
than  Calhoun,  or  the  Kentucky  resolutions,  or  even  the 
patent  of  the  Duke  of  York.  God  never  made  Xew  Jer- 
sey to  be  a  sovereignty,  and  that  is  the  best  of  all  reasons 
why  she  should  never  assume  to  be  one.  Cases  of  neces- 
sity! why,  there  are  every  where  just  such — every  where 
in  our  history,  every  where  in  our  geography.  Attempts 
at  separation  put  them  in  a  stronger  light  than  ever;  they 


32 


reveal  others  that  never  had  been  suspected  before.  The 
national  agony  in  the  crises  of  dislocation  shows,  beyond 
all  abstract  reasoning,  the  vile  logic,  as  well  as  the  damn- 
ing sin  of  secession. 

Endless  were  the  negotiations  in  Greece  arising  out  of 
such  a  state  of  things.  The  difficulty  was  felt  in  every 
part.  Sparta  contended  that  the  isles  should  be  indepen- 
dent, the  small  as  well  as  the  greater.  Each  should  have 
autonomy.  But  then  it  would  not  do  that  any  of  them 
should  be  on  friendly  terms  with  Sparta's  rival,  or  furnish 
naval  stations,  or  commercial  advantages  to  her  enemies, 
whether  old  or  new.  And  so,  too,  Elis  must  yield  some 
of  her  sovereignty,  that  Sparta  might  have  more  coast 
room,  and  an  easier  access  to  the  Gulf  of  Corinth.  The 
cities  of  Euboea  must  have  autonomy,  but  then  it  is  also 
necessary  that  there  should  be  a  strong  Lacedaemonian 
power  there,  with  certain  fortresses  as  pledges  of  security, 
in  order  to  counteract  the  influence  of  the  near  lying  Attic 
state.  To  be  sure,  they  must  all  have  autonomy,  but  then 
nothing  must  be  allowed  to  weaken  autonomy's  great 
defender,  the  Peloponnesian  confederacy. 

This  kind  of  reasoning  would  have  had  a  just  and  noble 
aspect  had  it  been  employed,  as  conservative  of  the  integ- 
rity of  a  great  Grecian  nationality,  and  as  a  defense  against 
foreign  power,  Persian  or  Macedonian.  To  preserve  un- 
impaired the  Hellenic  wholeness — to  guard  against  expo- 
sure of  it  to  foreign  invasion,  or  any  insidious  foreign 
intervention,  through  the  weakening  or  defection  of  any 
part,  would  have  been  a  sublime  policy  worthy  of  Pericles 
and  Demosthenes.  But  the  little  great  men,  who  preached 
state  rights  in  all  these  petty  commonwealths,  could  not 
see  this.  It  was  too  large  for  their  angle  of  vision,  just 
adapted,  as  it  was,  to  the  diminutive  and  the  near.  They 
could  not  reach  the  height  of  this  great  argument,  even  as 
Mr.  Davis  himself  cannot  now  see  how  his  plea  of  confed- 
erate inconvenience,  as  against  Xorth  Carolina,  or  the 
danger  which  her  departure  would  occasion  to  his  own 
power,  cuts  up  by  the  roots  every  argument  he  has  em- 


33 


ployed  for  the  right  of  secession.  If  North  Carolina  can- 
not be  permitted  to  go  in  peace  (even  with  an  acknow- 
ledged and  solemnly  guaranteed  right  to  do  so),  because 
she  would  make  a  chasm  between  Virginia  and  Georgia, 
or  lose  to  the  Confederacy  the  security  of  the  Southern 
coast,  we  think  immediately  of  the  chasms,  and  deformi- 
ties, and  insecurities,  that  this  doctrine  of  secession  brings 
to  a  structure  far  more  beautiful,  far  more  beneficent,  hav- 
ing far  more  right  to  live  as  one  of  the  great  "powers 
ordained  of  God."  We  cannot  let  you  go,  says  Davis;  he 
treats  it,  and  rightly  too,  as  something  more  than  a  matter 
of  conventionality;  we  will  make  war  upon  you,  if  you 
dare  to  think  of  leaviug  us — and  Gov.  Vance  seconds  the 
cry.  But  the  war  for  the  nation,  that  is  an  atrocious 
wrong ;  to  shed  blood  in  defense  of  this  precious  national 
integrity,  such  a  proceeding  fills  our  pious  peace  men  with 
horror.  North  Carolina  would  make  a  hiatus  in  the  unnat- 
ural Southern  monstrosity;  Davis  thinks  that  very  bad; 
but  secession  disfigures  the  fairest  geographical  territory 
to  be  found  on  the  globe';  it  separates  from  their  sources 
the  mouths  of  mighty  rivers ;  it  leaves,  for  extended  fron- 
tiers, arbitrary  lines  of  most  surpassing  ugliness,  and  which 
nothing  in  nature  or  history  can  render  permanent ;  worse 
than  an  inundation  of  the  sea,  it  cuts  off  that  Gulf  corner 
of  our  land,  with  all  its  costly  national  works,  so  essential 
to  our  security  against  a  foreign  foe,  or,  what  is  worse, 
makes  it  the  seat  of  a  domestic  enemy  who  may,  at  any 
time,  expose  to  that  foreign  foe  the  most  vulnerable  and 
mortal  part  of  our  political  organism.  Though  North 
Carolina  has  an  abstract  right,  doubtless,  its  assertion 
would  be  practically  very  inconvenient.  Mr.  Davis  can- 
not part  with  the  Eoanoke  and  Albemarle  sound ;  but 
secession  may,  with  impunity,  cut  oif  from  the  United 
States  the  keys  of  Florida,  the  bay  of  Mobile,  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi,  with  all  its  countless  advantages  to  the 
North  and  West  !  There  must  be  no  chasms  in  the  new 
power ;  but  Ohio  (even  to  this  the  doctrine  brings  us)  has 
a  right  to  secede,  though  her  doing  so  would  leave  an 

5 


34 


impassable  hole  in  the  very  centre  of  the  old  nationality. 
It  all  comes  to  this;  the  larger,  the  more  beneficent,  the 
more  natural,  and,  because  the  larger  and  the  more  natu- 
ral, therefore  the  less  jealous  and  selfish  power,  is  thus 
ever  to  be  watched,  and  causelessly  assailed ;  whilst,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  smaller  the  subdivisions  the  more 
sacred  their  rights,  though  history  proves  that  such  petty 
sovereignties  have  ever  been  among  the  greatest  nuisances 
on  earth. 

Such  was  the  reasoning  in  Greece;  such  is  it  now  with 
us,  when  men  contend  against  nature,  history  and  geo- 
graphy, as  well  as  the  most  solemn  national  compacts. 

We  are  not  contending  against  true  state  rights,  any 
more  than  against  the  rights  of  families  and  individuals. 
They  need  not  be  opposed' to  each  other  or  confounded. 
There  is  a  clear  and  indelible  distinction  between  national 
and  municipal  rights,  between  national  and  municipal 
government.  It  exists  in  the  very  nature  of  things  and 
ideas.  The  latter  may  be  safely  carried  to  any  extent  con- 
sistent with  its  own  legitimate  internal  aims,  and  the  safety 
of  that  embracing  whole  which  gives  to  the  parts  all  their 
dignity  and  value.  Local  government,  for  local  purposes, 
is  no  new  thing,  first  tried  with  us.  It  exists,  more  or  less, 
in  every  nationality.  It  is  exercised,  of  necessity,  and  to 
some  degree,  in  the  most  despotic  and  consolidated,  whilst 
in  such  a  political  structure  as  ours,  it  forms  a  prominent, 
and,  if  not  abused,  a  most  salutary  feature.  It  may  be 
defined  as  a  political  power  that  ever  looks  within,  un- 
acknowledged by  foreign  nationalities  and  having  no 
relations  to  them  except  through  an  outer  nationality,  of 
which  it  forms  an  organic  part.  Thus  Connecticut  and 
Ohio  have  a  less  dependent  social  jurisdiction  than  Corn- 
wall or  Middlesex,  but  they  are  equally  unknown  to  the 
world  of  sovereign  nations.  True  national  government, 
on  the  other  hand,  may  be  defined  as  looking  both  within 
and  without,  though  the  latter  is  its  "predominant  aspect 
as  it  will  appear  in  history.  It  has  in  charge  all  foreigt 
relations.    Besides  this,  it  is  the  only  power  that  can  fcrulj 


35 


regulate  intercourse  between  its  parts.  Both  are  summed 
up  in  this  ;  there  is  committed  to  it,  and  of  necessity  com- 
mitted to  it,  its  own  preservation,  and  the  preservation  of 
the  parts  in  the  preservation  of  the  whole  of  which  they 
are  parts. 

The  general  idea  of  national  existence  being  thus  stated, 
the  question  arises,  what  belongs  to  it?  What  specific 
powers  are  the  least  that  can  be  assigned  to  it?  The 
answer  comes  from  the  very  idea  of  an  organic  political 
body  forming  a  true  sovereignty — that  is,  according  to 
another  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  terse  definitions,  acknowledging 
no  human  power  above  it  on  the  earth.  Conventionalities 
may  modify  these  powers ;  the  manner  of  their  exercise 
may  be  regulated  by  a  national  understanding  which 
becomes  its  constitution  for  that  purpose,  but  they  derive 
not  their  origin  from  it — their  sanction  from  it.  They  in- 
here in  the  very  idea  of  nationality  itself.  In  other  words, 
given  a  true  nation — whether  as  made  by  history  or  other- 
wise— and  these  powers  are  given.  Let  us  attempt  to 
define  them. 

A  true  nation  has,  first  of  all,  and  above  all,  the  power 
of  self-preservation,  of  preserving  its  own  existence  accord- 
ing to  its  organic  law,  which  is  the  theoretical  idea  or  con- 
stitution which  history  has  given  to  it.  As  following 
directly  from  this,  it  has  the  i^ower  (acting  through  this 
higher  organic  law,  and  without  violating  the  mode  pre- 
sented by  its  conventional  constitution),  of  making  that 
conventional  constitution,  from  time  to  time,  such  as  will 
best  contribute  to  this  great  end  of  preserving  its  own 
national  being*  which  is  assumed  to  be  a  "power  ordained 

*  This  idea,  so  well  expressed  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  of  the  nation  being  above  all,  and 
older  than  all,  is  fundamental  to  all  true  conservatism.  It  is  rather  a  curious  fact, 
that  in  the  floating  cant  of  the  times,  this  word,  conservative,  should  be  assumed 
by  men  holding  a  doctrine,  that  inevitably  leads  to  national  disintegration.  Of  ail 
destructive  political  heresies,  the  worst  is  that  which  now  seeks  to  pass  itself  uuder 
this  honored  name.  It  is  still  more  strange  when  we  think  of  those  to  whom  the 
appellation  is  now  given.  The  word  conservative,  whatever  may  be  its  political 
souudness.  has  heretofore  been  associated  with  respectability,  with  intelligence, 
with  social  order,  with  individual  and  social  morality.    Who  are  now  the  conser- 


36 


of  God,"  beneficial  to  itself  and  to  the  world.  From  this 
great  fundamental  right,  flow  out  all  the  rest.  It  has  all 
powers  relating  to  foreign  intercourse.  It  has  the  war- 
making  power,  the  treaty-making  power,  the  foreign  com- 
merce regulating  power.  It  has,  in  the  other  aspect, 
all  powers  in  the  ultimate  relating  to  the  internal  inter- 
course between  the  parts,  and  which  those  parts  cannot 
exercise  without  a  coufusion  and  an  insecurity  inconsistent 
with  the  common  welfare,  both  of  parts  and  whole.  Hence 
it  has  the  internal  revenue  power,  the  post-office  power,  or 
the  trust  which  such  a  whole  alone  can  well  and  safely 
exercise,  of  harmoniously  conveying  the  internal  intelli- 
gence. It  has  the  internal  commerce  regulating  power ; 
it  has  the  inter-civic  power,  or  the  determination  of  the 
one  common  citizenship,  the  same  and  unchangeable  in 
every  part.  Again,  it  has  all  the  powers  that  spring  from 
both  of  these  aspects,  the  foreign  and  the  domestic,  in 
their  combined  relation  to  the  national  well-being  and  the 
national  existence.  Hence  it  has  the  navy  creating  power, 
the  fort  and  armory  building  power,  the  port  establishing 
power,  the  public  road  making  power,  so  far  as  there  are 
demanded  facilities  of  intercourse  and  of  internal  improve- 
ments that  may  be  necessary  to  national  compactness, 
national  strength,  and  national  defense.  As  embracing 
all  these  aims,  it  has  that  great  attribute  of  nationality 
ever  regarded  as  inseparable  from,  and  involving  the  idea 
of  sovereignty — the  money  making  power.  We  might 
mention  others,  which,  although  inherent  in  the  idea  of 
nationality,  have  their  outer  manifestation  only  in  some 
peculiar  aspects  of  modern  civilization,  such  as  the  estab- 
lishment of  coast  surveys,  or  expeditions  for  geographical 
and  scientific  discovery,  or  the  granting  of  copyrights  for 
the  encouragement  of  literature,  or  for  any  other  healthful 
exercise  of  the  human  intellectual  powers  that  would  only 

vative  masses  ?  They  are  the  refuse  of  our  great  cities,  they  are  the  rioters  and 
negro  burners  of  New  York,  they  are  men  who,  in  former  days,  have  been  known 
as  filibusters,  favorers  of  the  slave  trade,  and  of  every  wild  adventure  opposed  as 
well  to  the  law  of  nations,  as  to  the  laws  of  the  land  in  which  they  dwell. 


37 


be  cramped,  if  not  wholly  hindered,  by  the  petty  jealousies 
of  narrow,  local  legislation,  ever  the  more  violent  and  des- 
potic in  proportion  to  its  narrowness.  Add  to  this  all 
powers  necessary  for  carrying  into  effect  the  foregoing, 
and  we  have  the  general  sum  of  what  belongs  to  true 
sovereignty,  what  a  nation  must  possess  from  the  simple 
fact  alone  of  its  being  a  nation. 

These  powers  belonged  to  that  great  nation,  that  most 
peculiar  historical  and  geographical  unity  we  called  the 
United  States.  They  are  mostly  specified  in  its  written 
constitution  ;  but  this  is  declaratory  rather  than  originat- 
ing. The  power  that  made  that  constitution,  and  might 
have  made  it  otherwise,  must  have  contained  all  these 
powers  inherently  before.  They  may  have  been  wrapped 
up,  undeveloped,  unexercised,  in  some  degree  unthought 
of,  but  they  were  there.  Had  that  instrument  contained 
but  one  clause  ;  had  the  convention  from  which  it  derived 
its  outward  form  and  modus  operandi  made  and  recorded 
but  this  one  single  utterance,  and  that  not  an  enactment, 
but  a  declarative  statement,  that  this  territory  we  call  the 
United  States,  of  right,  ought  to  be,  and,  in  fact,  was,  a 
nation  among  the  nations  of  the  earth,  such  declaration 
would  have  contained  in  it,  and  carried  with  it,  every  one 
of  these  powers ;  or  had  it  added  one  single  organizing 
clause  in  lieu  of  all  others,  giving  to  one  man,  to  be  chosen 
every  year  by  the  votes  of  the  people,  the  entire  national 
administration,  executive,  legislative  and  judicial,  such  a 
form  of  government  would  be  indeed  most  defective,  but 
that  one  man  thus  representing  the  national  mind  and  the 
national  will,  would  have  rightly  had  in  himself  all  these 
prerogatives  of  peace  and  war,  of  commerce,  revenue, 
money,  national  defense,  and  national  existence. 

Some  of  these  powers  raay  lie  long  in  embryo,  but  they 
are  born  in  time.  Some  of  them  were  not  outwardly 
developed  in  the  first  years  of  our  separate  history,  but 
they  are  contained  in  the  very  idea  of  nationality,  and 
must  have  found  a  way  to  assert  themselves  under  any 
organic  form,  however  defective  and  hindering.  Jefferson 


3"8 


asserted,  and  asserted  rightly,  that  even  in  the  old  articles 
of  confederation,  apparently  weak  as  they  were,  lay  the 
power  of  state  coercion.  Under  onr  present  constitution, 
all  such  developments  have  a  regular  and  easy  birth. 
There  is  a  regular  organic  mode  through  which  the  consti- 
tution, and  the  government  under  it,  may  assume  any 
form,  and  may  become  any  thing  that  the  exigencies  of 
the  national  existence  and  well-being  may  demand. 
Through  the  prescribed  modes  of  constitutional  change, 
it  may  become  more  consolidated,  or  less  consolidated  ;  if 
the  popular  or  national  mind  and  national  will  organically 
acting  demand  it,  it  may  approach  nearer  to  monarchical 
and  aristocratical  forms,  or  it  may  recede  farther  from 
them  ;  it  may  become  more  democratic,  or  less  democratic ; 
it  may  allow  slavery  every  where,  or  wholly  free  itself 
from  slavery ;  it  may  leave  greater  powers  in  the  states 
than  they  now  possess,  or  it  may  in  time,  and  proceeding 
in  the  regular  course  of  constitutional  amendment,  whollj' 
obliterate  politically  every  state  line.  Through  all  this,  it 
is  the  same  life,  and  in  fact  the  same  constitution,  for  it  is 
acting  according  to  that  organic  law  which  constitutes 
national  as  well  as  physical  identity.  It  is,  too,  the  same 
national  mind  and  will  in  all  these  varied  aspects  of  its 
manifestation.  It  is  the  one  national  soul  linking  into  a 
common  identity,  the  past,  the  present,  and  the  future. 
It  is,  in  short,  the  one  nation  living  on  forevermore,  and 
which  Cicero  so  impressively  says,  was  not  made  to  die. 
Hence,  there  is  one  thing  which  it  cannot  do — we  mean, 
of  course,  rightfully  do.  It  cannot  destroy  itself.  There 
is  no  provision  in  its  life  for  death.  It  may  violently  com- 
mit suicide  like  a  man,  but  the  act  is  unnatural  to  it ;  it  is 
abhorrent  to  its  organism.  God,  too,  may  destroy  it ;  but 
such  a  catastrophe,  we  may  well  suppose,  only  happens 
when  it  has  rendered  itself  incapable  of  any  beneficent 
function,  and  become  a  nuisance  upon  the  earth.  The 
danger  of  our  becoming  such  a  nuisance  is  now,  as  it 
anciently  was  in  Greece,  wholly  on  the  side  of  this  doctrine 
of  state  rights.    It  is  a  very  old  habit  of  men  "  to  cry 


39 


fear,  where  uo  fear  is,"  but  there  is  nothing  for  us  to 
apprehend  in  the  other  direction.  The  states  are  not  in 
danger  from  the  nation  ;  they  never  have  been.  The  local 
powers  will  never  want  their  noisy  advocates.  But  why 
should  there  be  any  jealousy  between  them  ?  In  the  har- 
monious workings  of  our  beautiful  structure,  national  and 
municipal  powers,  as  we  have  attempted  to  define  them  (or 
state  powers,  if  the  name  is  preferred),  are  mutually  inter- 
penetrating in  act,  though  so  distinct  in  idea.  When  we 
speak  of  our  national  government,  especially  to  a  foreigner, 
we  generally  have  in  mind  the  articles  made  in  1787,  and 
commonly  called  "  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States." 
But  this  is  a  very  inadequate  view  of  the  matter.  Our 
frame  of  government,  as  one  harmonious  nationality  in 
its  outward  and  inward  workings,  is  rather  that  majestic 
yet  complicated  structure  which  combines  all  that  is  gene- 
ral, all  that  is  local,  all  that  is  national,  and  all  that  is 
municipal,  in  one  great  charter  of  rights  and  duties ;  so 
that  should  a  foreigner  ask  to  read  our  constitution,  it 
would  be  right  to  give  him  the  book  containing  all — the 
state  and  national  constitutions  combined  in  one — as 
the  only  complete  description  of  our  organic  life.  This  is 
our  constitution  with  its  many  chapters  and  sections — this 
is  our  law  of  national  being.  Each  state  charter  is  a  part 
of  the  great  national  understanding,  and  so,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  national  constitution  enters  into  that  of  each 
state,  as  much  as  though  it  had  been  recited  verbatim  in 
the  preamble,  or  declared  to  be  a  part  of  it  by  an  appendix 
expressly  added  for  that  purpose.  Here  is  solved  wliat 
has  seemed  to  some  the  perplexing  problem  of  state  and 
national  allegiance.  They  are  one  and  the  same.  The 
man  who  swears  to  support  the  constitution  of  Virginia 
in  all  its  integrity,  does,  in  the  same  act,  and  even  if  he 
took  no  other  oath,  swear  to  maintain  the  constitution 
of  the  United  States — the  constitution  of  that  whole  of 
which  Virginia  is  a  constituent  part,,  and  without  which 
neither  Virginia  nor  her  constitution  would  be  what  they 
now  are. 


40 


Such  a  nationality  has  truly  existed  in  this  geographical 
territory  contained  by  the  Lakes,  the  Atlantic,  the  Gulf, 
and  the  Mississippi.  It  arose  out  of  the  one  and  entire 
British  sovereignty.  It  was  announced  in  the  declaration 
of  independence ;  it  was  the  living  principle  of  the  war 
that  followed ;  it  was  solemnly  confirmed  in  the  treaty  of 
peace  made  with  Great  Britain  in  1783.  There  were  but 
two  parties  known  in  that  transaction.  It  was  the  English 
treating  w7ith  the  then  acknowledged  American  sove- 
reignty. It  was  the  old  Anglo-Saxonism  acknowledging 
the  nationality  of  the  new.  No  one  of  these  several 
sovereign  states — so  claimed  to  be — was  ever  acknow- 
ledged as  such  by  any  power  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
They  never  had  a  war,  or  peace,  or  commercial  alliance, 
with  any  foreign  state.  As  sovereignties,  as  nations,  they 
are  utterly  unknown  to  history. 

The  true  American  sovereignty,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
never  since  ceased  to  be  one  and  entire.  It  has,  at  times, 
been  feeble  indeed,  but  never  shared  with  any  other.  If 
this  is  not  so,  then  we  have  an  anomaly  in  politics.  If  we 
have  not  been  a  nation — one  nation  —  then,  for  the  space 
of  ninety  years,  has  there  been  no  political  sovereignty  ot 
any  kind  within  these  limits — nothing  that  could  be  called 
by  the  name.  In  every  other  portion  of  the  earth,  among 
all  other  people,  however  civilized  or  barbarous,  there  has 
ever  been  some  one  acknowledged  supreme  political  power, 
sovereign  to  all  without ;  here,  in  this  fair  territory  of  ours, 
there  has  been  no  national  existence.  If  the  state  rights 
doctrine  be  true,  it  has,  during  all  this  time,  and  as  far  as 
foreign  powTers  are  concerned,  been  a  blank  political  waste. 
For  nearly  a  century,  we  have  been  speaking,  and  acting, 
and  living  a  lie. 

But  even  this  lie,  bad  as  all  lies  are,  is  better  than  the 
reality  that  would  have  been  without  it.  If  a  delusion,  it 
has  done  something  to  keep  the  peace.  We  shudder  at 
the  thought  of  thirty  off  more  such  sovereignties  as  New 
Jersey,  filled  with  such  politicians  as  our  state  rights  men 
generally  are,  being  crowded  within  these  bounds.  To 


41 


say  nothing  of  any  bloody  horrors,  such  as  never  ceased 
in  unhappy  Greece,  what  a  loss  of  all  dignity,  of  all  politi- 
cal value,  what  a  sinking  of  all  that  is  high  and  heroic  in 
national  reminiscences !  Let  us  try  and  imagine  such 
states  acting  their  little  mischievous  part  on  the  theater 
of  history.  New  Jersey  sending  ambassadors  to  France 
or  Russia;  the  high  and  mighty  state  of  North  Carolina 
entering  into  articles  of  everlasting  amity,  or  chivalrously 
engaging  in  war,  with  Great  Britain  !  What  farces  would 
these  be !  And  then  their  political  annals,  what  sublime 
reading  that  would  be!  Events  taking  place  in  a  very 
small  territory  may,  indeed,  have  an  everlasting  page  in 
history,  but  then  they  must  be  connected  with  something 
that  is  intrinsically  great,  something  wide  reaching  in  its 
influence  upon  the  destinies  of  mankind.  The  little  Greek 
states,  beside  their  connection  with  the  old  heroic  deeds 
of  the  Homeric  and  Anti-Persian  Panhellenism,  had  some- 
thing of  a  history  of  their  own,  going  far  back,  some  of 
them,  into  remote  antiquity;  but  there  is  nothing  historical 
in  New  Jersey  and  North  Carolina,  except  as  connecting 
them  with  some  greater  historical  whole.  Guilford  and 
Monmouth  are  not  their  battlefields,  any  more  than 
Gettysburg  belongs  to  Pennsylvania.  Over  all  of  them 
had  we  better  draw  the  veil  of  everlasting  oblivion,  than 
have  them  remain  as  monuments  of  our  deep  dishonor 
when  the  state  rights  doctrine  shall  have  wrought  its  ruin 
in  our  land. 

The  lamentable  error  in  Greece  was  the  factious  preven- 
tion of  any  such  nationality  ever  being  formed.  With  us 
it  is  more  than  an  error.  The  great,  the  ineffable  crime  in 
our  land  is  the  seeking  to  destroy  such  nationality  after  it 
had  existed  full  and  strong  for  eighty  years,  after  genera- 
tions had  been  born  under  it,  receiving  its  rights  and 
privileges  as  a  precious  inheritance  from  their  fathers, 
and  transmitting  them  as  the  most  invaluable  legacy  to 
their  children.  Nor  is  this  latter  fact  of  least  importance 
in  our  argument.  It  is  higher  and  stronger  than  any  con- 
ventionality.  No  paper  constitution  has  such  a  sanction 


42 


as  this  silent  course  of  nature,  bringing  out  the  unborn, 
and  placing  them,  at  the  very  origin  of  their  earthly 
existence,  in  the  stream  of  historic  influences,  and  under 
the  educating  power  of  settled  institutions.  It  is  the  seal 
that  God  sets  upon  the  work.  It  connects  the  present  with 
the  past  and  the  future.  Generations  thus  born  under 
law,  are  ever,  by  their  very  law  of  continuity,  transforming 
the  conventional  cement  into  organic  growth,  and  convert- 
ing what  might  seem,  outwardly,  the  work  of  man  into  a 
true  historic  "  power  ordained  of  God." 

But  let  us  not  lose  sight  of  Greece,  that  most  instructive 
mirror  that  God  has  given  us  for  our  perfect  illumination. 
We  see  reflected  there  our  own  picture  in  its  minutest 
lights  and  shades.  Her  past  projects  itself  into  our  future, 
and  from  it  there  is  no  great  difficulty  in  telling  what  will 
be  the  next  step,  if  we  follow  on  the  downward  course  of 
her  sad  history.  Along  with  this  cry  of  autonomy,  and 
often  in  practical  inconsistency  with  it,  there  arose  in 
Greece  the  doctrine  of  "  the  balance  of  power."  We  know 
the  wars  that  this  has  occasioned  in  modern  Europe.  But 
the  adjustment  of  those  larger  and  natural  sovereignties 
has  a  benefit  counterbalancing  the  inevitable  evils.  When 
the  attempt  is  to  apply  it  between  petty  sovereignties 
arbitrarily  divided,  and  without  any  ethnological  ground  to 
warrant  it — too  small  for  any  beneficent  ends,  and  having, 
therefore,  no  right  to  exist — it  becomes  evil  and  evil  only. 
There  is  no  power  so  despotic  as  well  as  so  mischievous  as 
petty  power.  A  rabble  of  such  contemptible  nationalities, 
placed  in  near  contiguity,  where  they  may  be  ever  snarling 
at  and  biting  each  other  !  It  is  a  den  of  vipers  ;  and  any 
act  of  God  in  history,  whether  through  foreign  subjugation 
or  otherwise,  that  closes  its  hissing  mouth,  is  to  be  desired 
and  prayed  for  by  every  true  friend  of  humanity. 

Along  with  this  never  settled  balance  of  power  doctrine, 
there  came  into  use  a  peculiar  political  vocabulary.  Such 
a  state  was  to  be  attacked  for  Atticizing;  another  was 
charged  with  Laconizing;  all  mutually  reproached  each 
other  with  Mediizing,  and  this  was  the  truest  of  all.  In 


43 


the  assertion  of  their  wretched  autonomy,  Sparta,  Thebes, 
Athens,  Argos,  the  Isles,  the  Colonies,  had  each  their 
deputies  at  the  foreign  Persian  court  intriguing  against 
each  other,  and  all  secretly  courting  this  once  vanquished 
power,  to  the  disadvantage  of  their  rivals.  It  entered  into 
the  spirit  and  proceedings  of  their  home  factions  as  they 
existed  in  each  state.  The  'sratpstai,  the  secret  party  meet- 
ings, the  political  clubs  or  caucuses,  had  often  with  them 
the  secret  foreign  emissary  to  encourage  and  report.  The 
fact  is  repeatedly  alluded  to  by  the  later  historians,  and 
well  may  it  remind  us  of  some  features  that  are  beginning 
to  appear  in  our  own  photograph.  We  are  startled  some- 
times on  looking  at  some  exhumed  relic  of  ancient  art. 
How  like  ourselves  and  the  work  of  our  own  times?  The 
Persian  legate  in  secret  conclave  with  a  faction  at  Corinth 
or  Sparta,  plotting  the  overthrow  of  some  rival  party  at 
home,  or  in  a  neighboring  state !  Such  a  mere  passing 
allusion  in  Xenophon,  or  Thuycidides,  is  like  an  old  in- 
scription dug  out  of  some  mouldering  ruin.  Clear  away 
the  rust  of  age,  bring  out  the  letters  in  their  distinctness, 
and  what  do  we  see?  It  is  the  veritable  record  of  an 
event  which  has  already  taken  place  among  us,  and  which 
bids  fair,  if  rebellion  triumphs,  to  be  often  repeated  in  our 
history.  It  is  the  British  embassador  privately  meeting 
with  a  political  club  in  New  York,  or  visited,  as  he  states, 
by  the  leaders  of  a  political  faction,  who  come  to  consult 
with  him  about  foreign  intervention,  and  the  time  for  it 
that  would  be  most  favorable  for  their  party  interests.  O 
the  unchangeableness  of  human  nature!  History  is  a 
repeating  cycle.  "  The  thing  that  has  been  is  that  which 
shall  be,  and  there  is  no  new  thing  under  the  sun." 

This  was  the  Greece  that  had  vanquished  the  millions  of 
Xerxes,  aud  rescued  all  Ionia  from  the  Oriental  sway. 
She  is  now  suffering  Ionia  to  go  back  to  the  yoke,  and  the 
Isles  to  fall  under  the  Persian  dominions,  just  as  we,  in 
our  impotence,  see  Mexico  under  a  Germau  Emperor,  and 
Peru  suffering  from  the  insults  of  Spain.  We  cannot  help 
ourselves,  for  men  who  once  sat  in  an  American  senate 


44 


are  now  waiting  for  recognition  at  the  court  of  Bonaparte, 
and  New  York  merchants  are  closeted  with  Lord  Lyons  in 
preparing  planks  for  the  platform  of  a  political  convention. 
O  Hellas,  how  rapid  thy  degeneracy !  This  deep  degra- 
dation was  not  long  after  10,000  Greeks  had  defiantly 
traversed  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Persian  Empire. 
There  were  yet  old  men  who  had  heard  their  fathers  tell 
of  Salamis,  as  we  now  hear  of  Bunker  Hill  and  Yorktown ; 
and  now  here  are  the  Greeks  waiting  in  the  ante-chamber 
of  the  Persian  monarch,  and  presenting  the  same  melan- 
choly humiliating  spectacle  that  we  shall  exhibit  when 
faction  and  "  state  rights "  shall  have  reduced  us  to  the 
same  condition  of  political  imbecility. 

It  is  to  be  noted  as  an  important  feature  in  her  history, 
that  though  clamoring  for  autonomy,  Greece  still  had  her 
confederacies.  She  was  ever  making  confederacies,  and 
dissolving  them  as  fast  as  made.  It  was  the  struggle  of 
nature  and  history  against  utter  anarchy.  But  these  con- 
federacies had  no  national  bond,  no  geographical  unity, 
no  common  historical  reminiscences  to  keep  them  to- 
gether. They  did  not  last  long  enough  to  make  any 
history  of  their  own.  They  were  formed  on  every  pretext 
that  faction  could  throw  up.  It  was  now  Sparta  and  Thebes 
and  Corinth  against  Athens.  Again  it  was  Sparta  and 
Corinth  against  Thebes.  In  these  continual  up  turnings 
we  find  even  Athens  and  Sparta  leagued  together  against 
Boeotia.  It  was  nothing  strange  that  such  unnatural 
antagonisms  should  now  and  then  give  occasion  to  equally- 
strange  alliances.  There  is  a  capricious  pleasure,  some- 
times, in  showing  how  those  who  have  fought  fiercely  with 
each  other,  can  fight  all  the  harder  for  it,  against  those 
whom  political  convulsions  have  made  for  the  time  their 
common  foes.  Thus  Massachusetts  and  South  Carolina 
may  some  day  be  found  fighting  together  against  Penn- 
sylvania and  Virginia.  There  were  times  when  Athens 
became  nearly  isolated.  Demagogues  in  other  states 
assailed  her  very  much  as  New  England  is  now  assailed. 
But  she  had  an  intrinsic  superiority  that  made  it  impos- 


45 


sible  she  should  ever  be  despised.  Her  high  culture,  her 
literature,  her  philosophy,  gave  her  a  proud  position,  even 
when  her  political  power  was  most  weakened.  Even 
the  dull  Boeotian  could  not  help  feeling  that  there  was 
something  very  respectable  in  the  Attic- alliance. 

That,  in  such  a  condition  of  things,  the  smaller  and 
weaker  states  must  suffer  every  kind  of  injustice,  we  need 
not  history  to  inform  us.  They  were  situated  just  as  Dela- 
ware will  be,  when  the  full  control  of  her  bay  and  river  is 
wanted  for  her  strong  neighbor  Pennsylvania,  and  there 
is  no  higher  power  to  prevent  the  latter  from  doing  just 
as  she  pleases.  Phocis  and  Elis,  Megara  and  Sikyon,  the 
smaller  cities  of  Thessaly,  the  scattered  and  helpless  Isles, 
the  distant  colonies,  were  ever  at  the  mercy  of  the  larger 
states,  and  endangered  by  every  new  and  shifting  con- 
federacy. They  still  kept  crying  out  for  autonomy,  and 
it  was  conceded  to  them  in  appearance,  but  nothing  could 
be  more  unreal.  It  was  Qver  made  the  occasion  of  the 
most  despotic  proceedings  on  the  part  of  the  larger  states 
in  their  continual  contentions  with  each  other.  Thebes 
was  getting  too  strong,  and  so  Sparta  was  seized  with  a 
sudden  passion  for  the  independence  of  the  Theban  de- 
pendencies. Thebes  must  grant  autonomy  to  the  lesser 
cities  which,  with  her,  formed  a  sort  of  Boeotian  confede- 
racy as  a  counterpoise  to  the  Peloponnesian.  Sparta  had 
a  right  to  demand  this ;  for  was  she  not  the  champion  of 
Grecian  independence  ?  When  it  was  demanded  of  her  in 
like  manner,  to  give  autonomy  to  certain  cities  of  Elis 
and  Arcadia,  which  she  had  taken  under  her  protection, 
she  had  ready  immediately  the  answer  of  Jefferson  Davis 
and  Gov.  Vance,  to  the  Eemonstrants  of  North  Carolina. 
It  was  not  convenient.  It  would  make  chasms  in  her 
boundaries;  it  would  weaken  her  frontier.  Sparta  must 
be  strong — for  was  she  not  the  great  upholder  of  auto- 
nomy, the  bulwark  of  state  rights — and,  therefore,  in  her 
case,  the  principle  must  yield,  or  seem  to  yield,  to  a  wise 
expediency. 

We  have  dwelt  upon  the  picture  minutely  and  at  length, 


46 

from  a  strong  desire  to  impress  it  vividly  on  the  minds  of 
the  readers.  The  truth  cannot  be  exceeded;  but  the  sad- 
dest tiling  of  all  is  the  thought,  how,  amid  all  this,  the  old 
national  glory  was  obscured,  and  the  proudest  remem- 
brances of  Grecian  history  lost  their  hold  upon  the  mind. 
And  this  was  no  merely  romantic  or  unreal  injury.  Every 
nation  has  its  heroic  age.  It  is  a  beneficent  provision  of 
God  in  history.  Such  heroic  age  is  the  fountain  of  its 
political  life.  When  this  dries  up,  that  life  withers,  and 
decrepitude,  premature  decrepitude,  rapidly  ensues.  Most 
strikingly  was  it  so  in  Greece.  As  autonomy  rings  upon 
the  ear,  we  hear  less  and  less  of  the  old  Homeric  days — 
less  and  less  of  Marathon,  and  Salamis,  and  Therm opy la? , 
and  Plataea.  Have  we  not  some  similar  experience  here  ? 
The  years  are  brief,  but  they  are  already  making  a  rapid 
difference  in  the  national  feeling.  In  a  large  portion  of 
our  country  the  Fourth  of  July  is  no  longer  celebrated. 
Washington's  birth-day  is  beginning  to  bring  up  only  the 
saddest  associations  of  ideas.  It  is  becoming  painful  to 
read  of  Bunker  Hill  and  Saratoga.  We  lay  the  book  aside 
with  the  mournful  hope,  that  God  will  bring  again  the 
time  when  the  feeling  of  the  heroic  shall  not  be  lost  in 
the  heavy  depression  that  now  accompanies  its  perusal. 
A  nation  loses  immensely  when  it  loses  this.  We,  of  all 
people,  can  least  afford  it;  for  our  heroic  age,  though 
bright,  was  brief.  Once  gone  from  its  due  place  in  our 
memories,  and  it  is  gone  forever.  We  have  no  historical 
materials  out  of  which  to  construct  again  its  reality  or  its 
semblance. 

This  utter  loss  of  the  heroic,  as  connected  with  the  old 
Hellenic  reminiscences,  is  especially  seen  in  what  is  called 
the  Peace  of  Antalcicjas,  made  in  the  year  387  before 
Christ.  It  was  some  time  before  the  closing  catastrophes, 
but  we  select  it  as  the  period  of  deepest  degradation, 
making  sure  what  must  sooner  or  later  come.  There  was 
a  spasmodic  revival  of  the  old  glory  in  the  days  of  Pelo- 
pidas  and  Epaminondas,  but  it  was  a  flickering  and  tran- 
sient flame.    Thebes  had  her  brief  turn  after  Athens  and 


47 


Sparta,  but  nothing  could  stay  the  degeneracy,  or  heal  the 
mortal  wound  that  had  been  given  to  the  true  Grecian 
independence  in  the  base  transaction  on  which  we  are 
dwelling.  There  died  the  last  hope  of  any  Hellenic 
nationality.  They  got  a  peace  at  last,  but  what  a  peace ! 
It  was,  indeed,  soon  to  be  broken  like  the  numberless 
truces  and  armistices  they  had  made  before ;  the  old  com- 
pound fracture  was  past  healing;  but  transient  as  was  this 
peace  of  Antalcidas,  this  is  not  the  main  thing  in  it  to 
which  we  would  call  attention.  It  was  rather  the  painful 
picture  it  presents  of  Grecian  degradation.  In  this  respect, 
it  could  sink  no  lower.  The  subsequent  subjugations  of 
Philip  and  the  Eomans  could  add  nothing  to  this  deep 
dishonor. 

The  influence  of  Persia  in  Grecian  politics  had  long  been 
felt — an  influence  arising  not  from  her  own  power,  but 
from  Grecian  divisions,  from  their  foolish  autonomy,  their 
insane  cry  of  state  rights.  This,  however,  is  the  first 
instance  in  which  that  foreign  power,  that  ancient  enemy, 
opeuly  and  diplomatically  appears  as  the  dictator  in  Gre- 
cian affairs,  under  the  pretense  of  protecting  the  independ- 
ence of  the  Grecian  states.  The  Oriental  despot  assumes 
the  position  of  defender  of  Greece  against  herself.  Her 
endless  and  bloody  wars  shocked  his  notions  of  humanity; 
he  is  horror  struck  at  the  fratricidal  strife.  The  parallel 
that  all  this  presents  with  some  things  in  modern  times, 
is  certainly  a  very  curious  one.  Thucydides  in  his  iv.  Book, 
sec.  50,  gives  us  quite  a  graphic  account  of  a  very  singular 
correspondence  between  Sparta  and  the  Persian  king. 
The  letters  had  been  intercepted  by  Aristides,  the  captain 
of  an  Athenian  ship  of  war.  They  were  transferred,  says 
the  historian,  from  the  Assyrian  character,  and  in  them 
Artaxerxes  is  found  complaining  of  the  Lacedaemonians 
that  he  cannot  tell  what  they  mean  yiyvwtfxsiv  S  n  0ouXovrai.) 
Their  plain  laconic  style,  in  which  they  so  prided  them- 
selves, had  suddenly  become  tortuous  and  diplomatic.  It 
was  the  same  difficulty  that  Napoleon  finds  in  determining 
what  the  South  means  to  do  with  Slavery.  But  the  obscu- 


4$ 


rity  was  not  greater  than  the  inconsistency.  The  Spartan 
chivalry  had,  in  former  days,  been  the  greatest  revilers  of 
the  Persian  power.  It  had  been  their  political  capital, 
just  as  in  onr  times,  abuse  of  England  and  the  charge  of 
British  influence  was  ever  the  standing  party  weapon 
of  onr  Southern  democracy.  British  gold  for  the  Federal- 
ists and  the  Whigs,  Persian  gold  for  the  Athenians ;  the 
comparison  runs  on  all  fours.  So  Sparta,  in  her  political 
diplomacy,  was  ever  claiming  to  be  the  peculiar  champion 
of  the  ancient  Monroe  Doctrine.  She  was  ever  accusing 
the  other  Grecian  states  of  Mediizing.  Especially  was 
this  charge  made  against  Athens,  the  most  truly  Grecian 
and  national  of  them  all.  But  what  do  we  now  behold  ? 
It  is  an  appearance  as  full  of  instruction  as  it  is  of  strange 
historic  interest.  When  the  traveler  looks  back  from  a 
certain  hill  in  Germany,  he  sees  painted  on  his  far  distant 
rear  horizon,  a  giant  figure  that  seems  to  move  when  he 
moves,  and  to  stand  still  when  he  stops  to  gaze  upon  it. 
It  is  caused  by  a  peculiar  state  of  the  atmosphere.  A  simi- 
lar phenomenon  is  sometimes  brought  out  in  the  mirage  of 
time.  We  pause  on  some  mount  of  history  and  look  back. 
Far  off  there  beckons  to  us  the  passionless  ghost  of  anti- 
quity. Is  it  the  Spectre  of  the  Brocken  that  is  mocking  us 
with  such  fantastic  imitations  of  our  own  acts  ?  Is  it  our 
own  shadow  thrown  back  two  thousand  years  over  the 
intervening  waste  of  time  ?  It  is  ourselves  we  see,  our 
own  inseparable  image  deriding  us  with  an  unmistakable 
fac  simile  of  our  own  folly  and  crime  !  There  we  stand  ; 
Mason  and  Slidell  at  London  and  Paris — Antalcidas  at  the 
Court  of  Susa — far  distant  in  the  flesh,  but,  in  the  timeless 
spirit,  all  the  same.  Here  we  find  Sparta  soliciting  inter- 
vention from  Artaxerxes,  promising  in  return,  not  cotton, 
for  that  was  a  thing  unknown  in  those  days,  nor  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  Helots,  but  the  annexation  to  Persia  of 
Ionia  and  the  Isles.  We  next  see  the  Spartan  ambassador 
side  by  side  with  the  Persian  envoy  at  the  Sardis  confer- 
ence, and  seconding  him  in  the  dictation  of  the  humiliating 
terms.    Eead  the  account  of  it  as  given  in  Xenophon's 


49 


Hellenics.  "  It  was  a  treaty  ready  made,"  says  the  historian, 
"brought  down  by  the  satrap  Tiribazus,  along  with  Antal- 
cidas,  the  Spartan  legate  ;  it  was  read  aloud  by  the  Per- 
sian, heard  with  silence  and  submission  by  the  Grecian 
deputies,  after  he  had  called  their  special  attention  to  the 
royal  seal," — farfsigag ja>  fiatfikiug  tupeM — as  though  in  this 
significant  act  lay  the  special  degradation  of  the  whole 
affair.  How  curt  this  intervening  despot's  style !  How 
clearly  does  he  show  his  consciousness  that  it  is  not  the 
men  of  Marathon  to  whom  he  is  now  talking.  So  brief 
is  the  royal  document  that  we  give  it  in  full :  "  Artaxerxes, 
the  king,  thinks  it  right  that  the  Greek  cities  in  Asia  should 
be  1m,  and  also  of  the  isles  Clazomense  and  Cyprus.  It 
is  his  will  that  the  other  Grecian  cities,  both  small  and 
great,  should  have  autonomy.  Whichever  party  does  not 
accept  the  peace,  I  will  make  war  against  them  with  my 
Grecian  allies,  both  by  sea  and  laud,  with  ships  and 
money."    (Signed  and  sealed,  Artaxerxes.) 

What  a  tableau  was  here !  Tiribazus  showing  thein 
the  king's  seal,  Antalcidas,  the  Spartan  deputy,  affirming 
its  authenticity,  the  others  standing  meekly  by  and 
receiving — autonomy.  Their  precious  "state  rights!" 
They  have  them  now  at  the  hands  of  the  Persian 
monarch. 

Our  view  of  the  humiliating  scene  is  concluded  when 
we  call  to  mind  what  autonomy  really  was  under  the 
Spartan  rule,  with  its  Dekarchies,  or  consular  boards,  its 
Harmosts,  or  agents  to  keep  the  peace,  in  all  the  states 
that  force  or  diplomacy  brought  under  her  influence.  It 
is  just  such  autonomy  as  will  be  fouud  in  a  Southern 
Confederacy,  should  Tennessee  or  Arkansas  venture  to 
assert  their  real  independence.  It  is  just  such  "  state 
rights,"  and  just  such  "free  speech."  as  will  be  allowed  to 
Massachusetts,  should  a  slaveholding  oligarchy,  protected 
by  France  and  England,  be  allowed  again  to  establish 
itself  in  our  land. 

"This  base  and  unholy  act"  (ajV^pov  xal  dvo'ciov  sp/ov),  as 
Plato  calls  it  in  the  Menexenus,  was  resolutely  opposed 


50 


by  the  Athenians.  How  bitter  it  was  for  them  is  seen  in 
the  mournful  Oration  of  Isocrates.*  It  sounds  like  a 
wailing  dirge  over  the  last  hope  of  true  Grecian  inde- 
pendence, and  of  a  true  Panhellenic  commonwealth; 
but  the  bitterest  thing  of  all  was  the  dictatorial  style, 
and  the  insulting  interference,  of  the  foreign  power 
brought  in  by  the  very  people  who,  in  former  days, 
had  most  reviled  it,  and  who  claimed  then  to  be  the 
peculiar  guardians  of  Grecian  rights.  Alas !  says  this 
polished  orator,  "have  we  come  to  this?"  6  /3aP/3apo£ 
y.r/js-ai  <j%  EWaSos,  xa'i  cp^Xaf  <r%  sip»jv*]£  g'tfr/v  —  "The  foreigner 
cares  for  Hellas,  he  is  the  keeper  of  its  peace!"  So 
Plutarch  says,  "It  was  a  peace,  if  we  may  call  it  such, 
that  brought  with  it  more  infamy  (and  more  calamity  too 
he  might  have  said)  than  the  most  disastrous  war."f 
These  wailings  of  antiquity — how  like  a  groan  they 
sound,  over  something  that  is  forever  lost — such  a  groan 
as  we  may  imagine  to  proceed  from  the  graves  of  Gettys- 
burg, when  it  is  found  that  this  sharp  conflict  has  been  all 
in  vain — when  Northern,  Southern,  and  Western  con- 
federacies shall  be  ever  forming,  ever  dissolving  as  soon 
as  formed,  yet  each  of  them,  in  their  brief  season,  having* 
their  begging  envoys  at  the  courts  of  Europe,  and  vieing 
with  each  other  in  the  degree  of  servility  they  can  afford 
as  the  price  of  any  petty  advantage  from  foreign  powers. 

The  peace  of  Autalcidas  failed,  of  course,  like  all  the 
rest;  but  from  that  time  the  course  of  Greece  was  ever 
downward,  with  the  bright  and  brief  exception  to  which 
wre  have  alluded.  The  heroism  of  Epaminondas  could 
not  avert  the  coming  catastrophe ;  the  eloquence  of 
Demosthenes  could  not  stay  it.  Foreign  subjugation 
became  inevitable;  and  we  acquiesce  in  the  verdict 
which  is  forced  upon  us,  when  convinced  that  no  Mace- 
donian or  Roman  despotism  could  ever  exceed  the  horrors 
that,  for  more  than  a  century,  had  formed  the  chief 
picture  in  Grecian  history. 


*  Isocrates,  Panegyrica.  page  184. 
f  Plutarch,  Vita',  Agesilaus.  23. 


51 


Greece  failed,  or  rather,  those  noble  spirits  failed,  who 
had  been  all  along  so  ardently  striving  for  a  Grecian 
nationality.  The  failure  there,  was  in  ever  becoming  a 
nation.  Shall  wre  make  the  greater,  the  far  more  disas- 
trous, and  far  more  criminal  failure,  of  suffering  our 
nationality  to  be  destroyed  after  eighty  years  of  such 
strong  and  proud  existence  ?  The  great  loss,  in  its  politi- 
cal estimate,  surpasses  our  arithmetic.  But,  there  is 
another  aspect  in  which  the  dire  calamity  comes  still 
nearer  to  us,  and  the  pain  of  imagining  it  becomes 
still  more  pungent.  Shall  this  effort  fail?  How,  then, 
could  we  bear  the  thought  of  the  precious  sacrifice  that 
has  been  already  made  to  prevent  so  unspeakable  a 
catastrophe  ?  Success  may  soothe  our  mourning,  though 
so  hard  to  bear  in  any  event.  But  O,  the  dead  and  gone, 
if  we  have  no  such  hope  to  comfort  us!  A  "nation 
drowned  in  tears!"  The  expression  has  been  often  used 
rhetorically  in  funeral  orations,  but  here  is  no  hyperbole. 
The  language  of  the  Prophet  alone  can  picture  it.  "A 
great  mourning  in  Jerusalem,  as  the  mourning  of  Hadad- 
rimmon  in  the  valley  of  Megiddo,  each  family  apart; 
the  family  of  the  house  of  David,  the  family  of  the  house 
of  Nathan,  the  family  of  the  house  of  Levi ;  each  family 
apart,  and  their  wives  apart."  Each  private  sorrow  but  a 
minuter  picture  of  the  universal  grief.  In  every  neigh- 
borhood, in  almost  every  family,  some  dead.  All  over 
our  land,  there  are  millions  who  are  suffering  the  same 
sharp  grief.  The  loss  of  these  precious  lives,  viewed  only 
in  themselves,  how  beyond  all  estimate!  But  shall  it  all 
be  in  vain?  That  is  the  still  more  trying  thought.  Shall 
it  be  all  in  vain,  either  through  the  force  of  open  rebel- 
lion, or  the  still  viler  treason  of  those  who  favor  rebels  in 
the  North?   Ah,  there  is  the  pang  uuutterable. 

But  we  must  not  quail  from  looking  even  this  issue  in 
the  face,  not  for  discouragement,  but  to  obtain  a  stimulus 
for  greater  and  more  heroic  effort.  Viewing  it  in  even  this, 
which  seems  its  most  painful  aspect,  we  may  ask  ourselves, 
might  there  not  have  been  something  still  worse  than  this? 


52 


Yes — something  still  worse  than  this  with  all  its  harrow- 
ing features.  We  say  it  with  a  full  and  feeling  conviction 
of  the  miseries  of  the  past  three  years.  Great  would  be 
the  evil  of  secession  triumphant,  and  terminating  in 
national  disintegration  ;  greater  still  the  evil  of  a  false 
nationality,  an  artificial  confederacy  with  the  poison  of 
secession  still  preserved  and  entering  into  its  very  bones 
and  marrow.  But  there  is  one  thing  worse  than  all  ;  it  is 
that  such  disastrous  change  should  have  come  with  no 
effort  to  prevent  it,  no  arm  lifted  to  stay  it,  not  a  blow 
struck,  not  a  life  lost  in  defense  of  a  nationality  so  glo- 
rious— or  once  thought  so  glorious — as  ours.  What  an 
unutterably  sad  picture  that  would  have  been ;  how  inde- 
scribably mournful  the  page  in  history — the  United  States 
disappearing  from  the  map  of  nations — each  one  of  us 
going  our  several  ways — occupied,  if  that  could  be  in  such 
a  state  of  things,  with  our  farms,  our  merchandise,  or 
our  books — and  the  nation  dying,  dying  undefended, 
unmourned,  with  no  protest  raised  against  an  act  so  hor- 
rible, so  unnatural,  so  utterly  unlike  any  thing  that  had 
ever  before  taken  place  in  the  history  of  man !  Sad  as  is  the 
thought  of  Ghancellorville  and  Chickamauga,  this  would 
have  been  saddest  of  all.  No  war,  however  unsuccess- 
ful, could  have  compared  with  it  for  disaster,  not  only  to 
the  political  hopes  and  political  welfare,  but  to  the  highest 
moral  interests  of  mankind.  Who  would  believe  in  gov- 
ernment, who  would  regard  it  as  a  divine  institution,  or  as 
having  any  thing  divine  about  it,  if,  with  all  its  oaths  and, 
sanctions,  it  could  be  so  trampled  under  foot  by  one  class 
of  men,  or  so  iu differently  given  up,  or  so  easily  postponed 
to  the  most  contemptible  interests,  by  another?  Yes — we 
say  it  with  firmest  conviction — far 

Better  to  have  fought  and  failed, 
Thau  never  to  have  fought  at  all. 

Such  would  be  the  unanimous  decision  of  posterity  look- 
ing at  the  truth  from  that  distance  which  ever  shows  its 
unclouded  face  and  fair  proportions.  We  are  not  afraid 
for  our  christian  name  in  thus  writing.    We  are  no  advo- 


53 


cates  for  war.  We  believe  tha,t  every  step  consistent  with 
right  and  the  higher  good  of  mankind  should  be  ever  taken 
to  avoid  it.  Bat  the  reader  will  see  that  the  question  is 
not  here  concerning  war  for  some  point  of  national  honor, 
and  waged  for  that  purpose  against  a  foreign  foe.  It  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  the  Christian  demand  for  peace 
should  be  ever  violated  for  such  a  cause ;  but  here  is  war 
for  national  defense,  yea,  more,  for  national  existence.  It 
is  a  war  for  law,  for  order,  for  the  obligation  of  solemn 
compacts,  for  the  sanctity  of  oaths,  for  religion,  for  mo- 
rality, for  social  quiet,  for  all  that  secures  the  transmission 
of  healthy  political  institutions  from  age  to  age,  for  all 
that  is  venerable  in  history,  for  all  "  that  is  lovely,  pure, 
peaceable,  and  of  good  report"  among  men,  for  all  that 
truly  makes  government  a  power  ordained  of  God. 

A  war  for  a  cause  like  this  cannot  be  wholly  a  failure, 
even  though  unsuccessful  at  the  time.  As  a  protest  alone 
it  would  have  an  immense  value  for  the  future.  It  con- 
tains in  it  the  seeds  of  good  for  ages  to  come.  It  carries 
with  it  the  germ  of  some  nation  yet  to  be  born  again — 
after  a  century  of  anarchy,  it  may  be — yet  still  preserving 
its  slumbering  vitality  in  the  remembrance  of  such  resist- 
ance. 

Again  shall  spring  visit  those  mouldering  graves. 

There  shall  come  a  resurrection  morn.  The  heroic  idea 
shall  still  live  through  this  long  winter  night  of  death, 
until  "  the  rain  is  over  and  gone,  the  flowers  again  appear 
in  the  land,"  and  the  new  nation  germinates  afresh  from 
those  mourned  battlefields  of  what  was  once  regarded  as 
a  failing  and  disastrous  war. 

It  is  not  a  failure,, even  though  it  be  but  to  carry  down 
the  stream  of  time,  and  embalm  in  history,  the  remem- 
brance of  the  heroic.  And  here  we  draw  again  upon  that 
storehouse  of  parallel  incident,  the  Grecian  oratory,  and 
the  Grecian  history.  We  find  the  very  case  we  have  pre- 
sented in  that  well  known  passage  from  the  oration  of 
Demosthenes  on  the  Crown,  still  better  known  from  what 


54 


is  said  about  it  by  the  great  critic  Longinus.  He  cites  it 
as  a  remarkable  example  otMhe  sublime,  according-  to  ttis 
own  definition  of  it,*  as  "  that  which  comes  upon  us  like  a 
thunderbolt,"  scattering  every  other  thought,  and  making  us 
gaze  alone  upon  the  vision  contained  in  the  glorious  words. 
It  occurs  soon  after  another  striking  passage,  in  which 
this  most  loyal  orator,  who  had  so  long  labored  to  arouse 
a  Panhellenic  feeling  against  Philip,  appeals  to  all  Greece 
as  witnesses  of  the  noble  efforts  of  bis  Attic  countrymen — 
"  What  one  of  the  Helleuians  knoweth  not,  what  one  of 
the  Barbarians  knoweth  not,  that  in  the  Theban  wars,  and 
in  those  former  wars  when  the  Laceda3inoniaus  were 
strong,  and  in  the  still  older  wars  with  the  Persian  king, 
how  willingly,  and  with  many  thanks  besides,  it  would 
have  been  given  to  Athens  to  take  what  she  pleased,  and 
to  hold  what  she  pleased,  if  she  had  only  allowed  another, 
and  a  foreign  power,  to  have  the  rule  in  Greece ;  but  this 
to  the  Athens  of  those  days  could  never  seem  patriotic,  it 
was  never  her  nature ;  it  was  never  to  be  thought  of,  never 
to  be  endured."  This,  however,  was  only  preparatory  to 
that  impassioned  burst  of  loyal  feeling  which  marks  the 
close  of  that  splendid  oration,  and  for  which  the  world  has 
ever  yielded  to  it  the  uncontested  palm  of  eloquence.  It 
should  be  borne  in  mind,  that  it  wras  just  after  some  of  the 
most  disastrous  military  defeats.  That  vile  copperhead, 
iEschines,  had  been  taunting  him,  and  his  party,  with 
their  failures,  aud  the  hopelessness  of  all  their  efforts  to 
maintain  the  integrity  of  Greece.  Chicago  could  not  have 
been  more  insultingly  triumphant,  or  more  bitter.  How 
glorious  the  reply !  what  a  light  it  sheds  amidst  all  the 
surrounding  darkness  !  what  a  cheering  beam  it  sends 
down  to  us  in  our  own  day  of  gloom,  and  after  the  lapse 
of  more  than  two  thousand  years.  "Like  one  suddenly 
inspired,"  says  Longinus,  "by  the  breath  of  divinity- 
like one,  cpot{3o\r)*<ros  yevo>svog  rapt  with  the  spirit  of  prophecy, 
he  spake  aloud  that  oath-like  appeal  to  the  old  heroes  of 


Longinus,  De  Sublimitate,  I  and  XVI. 


55 


Hellas,  oux  stfnv,  oux  soviv,  oVwg  ^aaprsre,  "  No,  my  co  u  ii  try  111  6D , 
no,  men  of  Athens,  ye  have  not  failed.  It  cannot  be,  it 
cannot  be,  that  ye  have  erred — on  ma  tons  en  Marathoni ; 
no,  I  swear  by  those  who  died  in  the  battle  front  of  Mara- 
thon, by  those  who  formed  the  phalanx  in  Plataea,  by 
those  who  conquered  in  the  sea  fight  at  Salamis  and  at 
Arteinisiuin — by  the  many  and  brave  who  now  lie  in  the 
jmblic  sepulchres — to  all  of  whom  alike,  O  iEschines,  and 
whether  they  fell  in  the  hour  of  victory  or  defeat,  the  state 
hath  awarded  a  glorious  burial;  and  justly,  too,  for  that 
which  was  the  only  work  for  brave  men  to  do,  that  they 
all  did — what  the  Deity  allots  to  each,  to  that  they  all  sub- 
mitted." Those  heroic  deaths  were  not  in  vain,  even 
though  Greece  were  lost.  The  resistance  would  show  that 
she  died  not  without  a  struggle.  Its  great  idea  would  lie 
embalmed  in  the  world's  memory,  giving  fragrance  to 
patriotism  and  to  loyalty,  through  all  time.  It  would 
stand  as  a  protest  against  the  wrong,  a  never  dying  appeal 
in  favor  of  the  right,  all  the  more  valuable  from  the 
precious  blood  by  which  it  was  confirmed,  all  the  more 
prophetic  of  future  success  in  some  similar  effort,  where 
the  cause  of  Grecian  disaster  should  stand  out  as  a  warn- 
ing beacon  to  republics  in  the  remote  latter  days  of  the 
world. 

The  blood  of  the  martyrs  is  not  shed  in  vain.  Such 
were  the  men  of  Marathon,  such  were  the  men  of  Gettys- 
burg, even  should  there  be  a  longer  or  a  shorter  eclipse  of 
the  American  nationality.  But  such  an  event  we  must  not 
anticipate.  Our  near  approach  to  a  known  castastrophe 
is  the  best  warning  against  it,  and  so  may  be  the  best 
means  of  escaping  a  similar  fate.  Paradox  as  it  may 
seem,  yet  time,  in  its  winding  course,  sometimes  brings  us 
strikingly  near  the  remote  past.  In  the  late  funeral  ser- 
vices at  Gettysburg,  we  seem  to  be  living  over  again  some 
of  the  most  solemn  scenes  in  Grecian  history.  In  the  ora- 
tion of  Mr.  Everett  on  that  occasion,  we  have  something 
that  may  well  compare  with  the  choicest  parts  of  Athenian 


56 


oratory.*  But  it  is  still  very  different  with  us  from  what 
it  was  with  the  Athenians,  when  Demosthenes  uttered  his 
sublime  apostrophe  to  the  dead.  We  have  had  no  such 
crushing  defeats,  no  such  disasters,  as  then  seemed  to  take 
away  all  hope.  We  know  that  we  are  strong,  if  domestic 
treachery,  with  its  lying'  names  of  conservatism,  state  rights 
and  state  sovereignty,  do  not  undermine  our  strength.  Our 
foreign  foes,  though  mighty,  are  far  away,  and  our  inward 
traitors  are  every  day  lessening  their  power  to  harm,  by 
revealing  more  and  more  of  their  turpitude. 

Above  all,  we  know  that  we  are  in  the  right;  and,  though 
God  may  suffer  the  right,  at  times,  to  be  overborne — though 
He  may  have  great  issues,  and  great  probations,  which  we 
may  not  clearly  understand,  whereby  one  right  is  post- 
poned to  another,  yet  the  history  of  the  world  cannot  be 
all  an  unending  experiment.  "  God  hath  not  made  all  men 
in  vain."  There  must  be  something  final  and  settled  ;  there  . 
must  be  some  experiments  that  terminate  in  success,  though 
many  seeming  failures,  in  the  world's  long  and  painful  his- 
tory, may  have  been  preparatory  to  it.  We  will  hope  on 
that  it  will  be  so  with  this  nationality  of  ours,  so  wonder- 
fully born,  so  wonderfully  preserved,  so  marked  in  all  its 
historical  growth  by  providential  interpositions,  and  having 
such  high  evidence — equal  to,  may  we  not  not-  say  sur- 
passing, that  of  any  other  nation  —  that  it  was  truly  "  a 
power  ordained  of  God." 

*  Mr.  Everett  may  well  Recalled  the  American  Isocrates.  He  has  all  the  polish 
of  that  Grecian  orator,  whilst  excelling  him  in  cogent  clearness  of  statement  and 
reasoning.  His  funeral  oration  at  Gettysburg  will  ever  be  regarded  as  a  most 
choice  and  classic  production,  ranking  with  that  of  Pericles  on  a  similar  memora- 
ble occasion,  to  which  Mr.  Everett  so  effectively  alludes.  But  there  was  one  sen- 
tence uttered  in  the  presence  of  those  graves  that  will  become  household  words, 
ever  coming  up  as  oft  as  Gettysburg  is  mentioned.  It  was  one  of  the  unstudied 
sayings  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  in  his  brief  introduction  to  the  orator  of  the  day. 
Their  pathos  and  their  power  are  enhanced  by  the  unconscious  greatness  and  sim- 
plicity of  their  utterance.  "  The  icorld  xuill  little  heed,  nor  long  remember,  what  we 
SA  Y  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  xohat  they  DID  here."  In  the  simple  contrast 
lies  the  moral  sublime  of  the  diction  and  the  thought.  Notwithstanding  the  speak- 
er's depreciation  of  his  own  language,  so  modest  and  unaffected,  the  saying  will 
not  be  forgotten,  for  it  is  inseparably  linked  with  the  grandeur  of  the  deeds. 


57 


It  is  because  we  believe  it  to  be  His  work,  that  we  think 
it  will  not  die — at  least  a  death  so  young  and  premature. 
Man  did  not  make  it ;  man,  therefore,  has  no  right  to  un- 
make it,  not  even  all  the  men  of  the  nation  combined. 
And  here  comes  up  a  question  to  which  we  have  briefly 
alluded  before,  and  which  the  reader  will  pardon  us  for 
dwelling  upon  again.  Horace  Greeley  is  a  most  sagacious, 
and — however  strange  the  assertion  may  seem  to  some — a 
most  conservative  politician.  There  is,  however,  a  doctrine 
of  his  to  which  we  can  never  subscribe,  and  which  we 
regret  his  ever  putting  forth.  In  the  beginning  of  our 
national  contest,  when  we  were  all  looking  on  with  be- 
wildering amazement,  and  "  wondering  whereto  this  thing 
would  tend,"  he  seemed  to  maintain  the  right  of  peaceable 
separation,  in  a  general  convention  called  for  that  purpose, 
and  by  proceedings  under  constitutional  forms.  We  can- 
not assent.  The  nation,  acting  in  accordance  with  its 
organic  law,  can  undergo  almost  any  modification,  or 
change  of  outward  form,  or  inward  state,  short  of  an  abso- 
lute self-negation  ;  it  can  rightly  do  almost  everything  else 
♦  than  a  voluntary  act  of  self-destruction.  AYe  trace  three 
stages  of  power,  but  nowhere  do  we  fiud  any  right  or 
ground  for  such  proceeding.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  no 
such  power  given  in  the  present  written  constitution.  It 
contains  provisions  for  amendment,  but  none  for  dissolu- 
tion. It  excludes  it ;  for  amending  implies  the  continuance 
of  the  constitution  amended,  and  of  the  nation,  or  body 
politic,  of  which  it  is  the  constitution.  In  the  second  place, 
the  men  of  the  convention  which  formally  enacted  that 
constitution  had  no  right  to  put  in  such  a  provision  ;  for 
they  were  delegated  there  for  no  such  purpose.  They 
were  sent  to  make  a  form  of  government  for  a  nation,  a 
constitution  as  full  or  as  brief,  as  rigid  or  as  flexible,  as 
finished  or  as  amendatory,  as  the  national  exigencies  might 
seem  to  require ;  but  they  were  not  authorized  to  destroy 
the  nation  itself,  or  to  make  any  provision  for  such  destruc- 
tion. Neither,  in  the  third  place,  could  the  people  who 
thus  delegated  them,  by  any  majority,  or  by  any  unauimity 

8 


58 


even,  have  given  them  this  power.  It  was  not  theirs  to 
give.  The  men  of  that  generation  alone,  however  unani- 
mous, were  not  the  natiou.  They  were  only  a  part  of  the 
nation  or  the  then  flowing  form  of  an  unchanging,  and 
an  undying  whole.  Past  generations  had  still  an  interest ; 
future  generations  a  still  deeper  interest.  The  dead  of 
Bunker  Hill  and  Saratoga  have  a  protest  here  ;  this  was 
not  that  for  which  they  fought  and  died.  The  dead  of 
Gettysburg  look  forth  from  their  graves ;  they,  too,  have 
a  voice  in  the  question  whether  they  shall  be  graves  of 
glory  or  dishonor.  The  unborn  are  demanding  their  inheri- 
tance. The  men  of  1787  did  not  make  the  nation,  and 
they  had  no  right,  as  we  have  no  right,  to  unmake  it.  It 
was  not  theirs  ;  it  is  not  ours,  except  to  preserve  and  trans- 
mit, not  to  destroy  or  suffer  to  be  destroyed.  God  made 
the  nation ;  it  cannot  be  said  too  often.  He  made  it  to 
live  on,  a  representative  of  the  spiritual  and  the  timeless, 
amid  the  flowing  generations.  He  ordained  it  as  a  power 
in  the  earth,  and  He  alone  has  the  right  to  destroy  it  when 
it  ceases  to  fulfil  the  great  end  of  its  being.  We  received 
it  as  a  trust ;  we  owe  it  to  God,  and  to  the  world,  and  to 
the  unborn,  that  it  should  continue  thus  to  live  on.  Any 
repudiation  of  this  higher  bond  is  of  the  same  base  nature 
with  that  lesser  repudiation  which  has  been  practiced  by 
the  men  who  would  now  cancel  our  national  existence.  If 
it  be  called  revolution,  we  can  only  briefly  answer  here, 
that  that  can  never  be  an  abstract  or  unconditional  right. 
It  is,  as  we  are  aware,  a  vexed  question,  but,  to  our  mind, 
all  its  difficulties  are  at  once  settled  by  the  simple  thought 
that  revolution  never  can  be  a  right,  except  when,  and 
where,  it  becomes  a  duty — a  most  solemn  and  imperative 
duty.  Let  the  Davis  rebellion  be  judged  by  this,  and 
there  is  no  need  of  any  other  argument. 

God  may  destroy  the  nation ;  but  God  is  placable ; 
"  there  is  forgiveness  with  him  that  he  may  be  feared./' 
We  will  "cover  ourselves  with  sackcloth;  it  may  be  that 
he  will  turn  away  from  his  fierce  anger,  that  we  perish 
not."    Humbly  we  will  confess  our  manifold  sins,  our 


59 


foolish  boasting,  our  vile  party  corruption,  our  excessive 
commercial  worldliness,  and  last,  though  not  least,  our 
heaven-defying  oppression  of  the  poor  and  the  weak, 
our  harsh  outlawing  of  those  "little  ones,"  whose  lowly 
care  God  had  made  our  high  probation,  and  around  whom 
we  ought  to  have  thrown  the  safeguard  of  law  in  propor- 
tion to  their  exposure  and  their  weakness.  National 
repentance  may  avert  his  wrath,  even  for  that  sin  of  sins, 
the  unholy  and  unchristian  Dred  Scott  decision. 

But  what  is  the  political  crime  of  the  North?  Let  men 
cry  out  fanaticism  as  much  as  they  please  ;  they  can  make 
no  other  record  than  this.  According  to  our  best  intelli- 
gence, and  our  clearest  conscience — in  both  of  which  attri- 
butes of  humanity  we  claim,  at  least,  an  equality  with  our 
opponents  either  North  or  South — we  voted  in  a  Presi- 
dential election.  TVe  were  prepared  to  abide  its  issue,  if 
defeated,  or  its  reversal  in  the  constitutional  way.  This  is 
our  case — the  whole  of  it.  When  the  sun  went  down  on 
the  first  Tuesday  in  November,  1860,  a  new  political  issue 
arose  over  all  the  land.  All  preceding  ones,  such  as  banks, 
tariffs,  annexations,  etc.,  had  been  temporary,  superficial, 
endurable  if  wrongly  decided,  or  capable  of  easy  remedy. 
This  was  a  vital  issue ;  the  life  of  the  nation  was  involved. 
All  other  issues  were  buried  until  this  was  decided,  and  so 
decided  as  never  to  come  up  again. 

How  often  had  we  boastiugly  said  to  the  world — look 
here — see  this  great  people — how  zealously  we  contend  at 
the  polls,  what  a  sudden  calm  of  order  and  conservatism 
immediately  follows  the  verdict  of  the  ballot-box.  Shall 
that  proud  assertion  ever  be  made  again  ?  This  was  the 
new  issue  of  that  eventful  day.  From  morn  till  night  had 
the  little  papers,  emblems  of  our  national  trust  in  human- 
ity, been  falling,  like  snow-flakes,  thick  and  fast,  over  all 
the  wide  extent  of  our  land.  Even  as  they  lay  silent,  and 
yet  uncounted  in  the  ballot-boxes,  this  issue  of  issues 
arose.  It  was  as  though  during  that  solemn  hour  every 
man  who  had  voted,  had  personally  promised  every  other 
man — yea,  had  sworn  it  with  a  solemn  oath — that  what- 


60 


over  that  verdict  should  be,  it  should  have  its  legitimate 
political  effect,  and  its  fair  political  trial,  until  in  like  man- 
ner solemnly  reversed — so  help  him  God.  Thus  virtually 
pledged  himself — by  the  very  act  of  voting — every  man  to 
every  man,  every  candidate  to  every  other  candidate, 
every  Republican  to  every  Democrat,  and  every  Demo- 
crat to  every  Republican.  As  we  walked  together  to  the 
polls,  this  was  the  spiritual  word  that  day  ascending — this 
was  its  sound  to  ears  opened  to  the  perception  of  spiritual 
things.  The  man  of  the  losing  party  was  more  bound  in 
honor,  as  well  as  in  conscience,  that  this  all  superseding 
issue  should  be  sacredly  maintained.  He  was  more  bound 
in  true  policy,  even  as  he  would  want  the  same  security  in 
some  future  issue  of  a  similar  kind. 

Ballots  or  bullets.  They  who  now  affect  to  talk  in 
deprecation  of  war,  and  in  favor  of  the  "peaceful  ballot" 
as  taking  its  place,  are  talking  absurdly,  if  not  treason- 
ably. "  Coercion  is  opposed  to  the  genius  of  our  institu- 
tions ;  Democrats  repudiate  it ;  our  remedy  is  the  peaceful 
ballot-box."  Such  was  the  absurdity  uttered  by  one  on 
taking  the  chair  of  the  late  Democratic  state  convention  of 
Xew  York.  The  ballot-box !  It  lies  in  ruins  and  tram- 
pled under  foot.  They  who  fight  for  it  may,  with  some 
consistency,  maintain  its  sacredness.  They  who  give  all 
the  aid  they  cau  to  its  violators,  and  yet  can  prate  of  "  the 
peaceful  ballot,"  have  nothing  but  the  excuse  of  utter 
stolidity  to  shield  them  from  the  consciousness  of  the  most 
detestable  hypocrisy. 


ADDENDA. 


# 


ADDENDA. 


I. 

The  City  State,  and  the  Empire. 

It  may  be  plead  on  behalf  of  Greece,  that  in  those  early 
times,  the  city  state,  as  Dr.  Lieber  well  remarks,  was  the 
normal  type  of  government  for  a  free  people.  The  empire 
state,  on  the  other  hand,  as  exhibited  in  the  Assyrian  and 
Medo-Persian  powers,  was  the  standing  type  of  despotism. 
Men  lived  in  cities  and  walled  towns  as  a  condition  of 
defense  against  outward  aggression ;  and  so  they  were 
drawn  into  separate  commonwealths  having  outward  secu- 
rity for  their  prominent  idea,  instead  of  the  general  ends 
of  beneficent  government.  Both  of  these  were  fallacies, 
as  viewed  from  the  stand-point  of  a  more  advanced  civili- 
zation, or  even  as  judged  from  the  progress  made  in  those 
later  days  of  the  Grecian  history  with  which  our  parallel 
was  mainly  occupied.  The  empire  was  not  peace,  and 
the  city  republic  was  ofttimes  the  most  cruel,  as  it  was  the 
most  petty  of  depotisms.  The  consolidating  oriental 
principle,  and  the  little  Greek  states,  both  violated,  though 
in  different  ways,  that  true  idea  of  nationality  which  God 
had  designed  as  the  ground,  and  rule  of  division,  for  bene- 
ficent political  institutions.  The  empire  tendency,  such  a 
favorite  in  the  East,  brought  into  one  unnatural  congeries 
a  confused  mass  of  heterogenous  nationalities.  They  were 
the  work  of  violence,  of  conquest,  of  warlike  ambition, 
having  in  view  no  governmental  end  of  any  kind,  whether 


64 


true  or  false.  They  had  no  true  anion  of  parts,  much  less 
that  deeper  and  more  organic  thing-,  a  vital  unity.  They 
were  ever  falling  to  pieces,  ever  changing  their  outer  and 
inner  form,  ever  destroying  and  superseding  each  other. 
God  permitted  them,  as  instruments  of  discipline  and  pun- 
ishment. So  we  are  especially  taught  in  that  storehouse  of 
political  wisdom,  the  Jewish  prophetical  books  ;  and  the 
teaching  has  been  confirmed  by  all  history,  ancient  and 
modern :  "  Thou,  O  Lord,  hast  ordained  them  for  judg- 
ment ;  O,  mighty  God,  thou  hast  established  them  for  cor- 
rection." There  are  still  such  unnatural  empires,  forcing 
together  separate  peoples  in  direct  violation  of  ethnology 
and  geography ;  but  they  are  "  among  the  things  that  have 
waxed  old,  and  are  ready  to  vanish  away."  If  the  Assy- 
rian power,  the  Caliphate,  the  political  tornado  called  in 
history  the  empire  of  Tamerlane — if  all  these  have  x>assed 
away,  what  exemption  can  be  expected  for  those  feeble 
imitations  of  the  ancient  scourges  that  are  now  found  in 
the  Austrian  and  Turkish  dominion  ?  The  Eoman  power 
had  a  work  of  civilization  which  God  gave  it  to  perform, 
and  Eussia  may  be  spared  for  centuries  to  serve  some 
similar  end  among  the  wild  hordes  that  make  up  its 
unwieldy  bulk ;  but  all  these  are  abnormal  political  exist- 
ences, just  so  far  as  they  extend  beyond  the  bounds  of  an 
ethnological,  linguistic,  and  geographical  unity. 

No  less  a  fallacy,  though  of  an  apparently  opposite 
kind,  shows  itself  in  that  free  city  type  of  government, 
such  a  favorite  in  Greece,  and  which  made  it  for  so  long  a 
time,  a  sea  of  kindred  blood.  As  the  one  forced  together 
diverse  and  inharmonious  nationalities,  so  the  other  kept 
violently  apart,  and  ever  in  most  sanguinary  strife,  men 
who  spoke  the  same  language,  who  had  one  common 
origin,  one  common  fund  of  mythological  tradition,  whose 
social  habits  and  political  ideas  were  almost  identical,  and 
among  whom  colonial  and  family  relationships  so  crossed 
each  other  as  to  give  each  part  a  direct  interest  in  every 
other  part,  and  in  the  whole. 


65 


This  is  dwelt  upon  here  to  avoid  any  interruption  of  our 
argument  elsewhere,  and  to  obviate  an  objection  that 
might,  perhaps,  arise  to  a  superficial  thinking.  The  Scrip- 
tures are  a  vacle  mecum  for  us  in  politics  as  well  as  in  theo- 
logy. In  Gen.  x :  5,  31,  Deut.  xxxii :  8,  Acts  xvii :  26,  we 
find  the  true  doctrine,  the  only  one  that  can  give  peace  to 
the  world,  and  in  the  light  of  which  alone  we  can  regard 
nations  as  being  truly  and  beneficently,  "  powers  ordained 
of  God."  The  Bible  is  as  much  opposed  to  a  false  cos- 
mopolitanism as  it  is  to  imperialism  and  popular  anarchy. 
God  meant  that  men  should  live  in  separate  political 
organisms,  "  each  people  after  its  tongue,  in  their  land, 
after  their  nations."  In  this  way  "  He  divides  to  them 
their  inheritance,  as  he  separates  the  sons  of  Adam,  and 
sets  the  bounds  of  the  peoples."  It  is  true,  "  He  hath 
made  us  all  of  one  blood;"  but  it  is  "that  we  may  live 
apart  on  all  the  face  of  the  earth ;"  to  which  end  "  He 
hath  determined  the  times  before  appointed,  and  the  limits 
(opodsoVas  the  termini  or  fixed  local  settlement)  of  their 
habitations."  Such  was  the  declared  purpose  away  back 
in  that  historic  morning  of  our  race,  when  He  divided  the 
human  speech, — whether  we  regard  this  as  initial  cause,  or 
itself  an  early  effect  of  the  human  dispersion.  Such  a 
division  into  nations,  when  clearly  understood  as  a  divine 
ordinance,  is  more  consistent  with  a  true  fraternity  than 
any  cosmopolitan  scheme  of  a  sincere  yet  mistaken  re- 
form. Communism  of  nations  might  be  found  as  alien  to 
such  brotherhood  as  communism  of  families.  But  the 
principle  must  neither  exceed  nor  fall  short.  If  blood  has 
flowed  from  the  effort  to  hold  distinct  nationalities  in  one 
unnatural  empire,  having  no  real  ties  of  kin  and  language 
to  bind  them  together,  it  will  continue  to  flow,  and  much 
more  copiously,  when  the  still  more  frantic  attempt  is 
made  to  establish  separate  petty  sovereignties  to  which 
God,  the  great  ordainer  of  nations,  hath  given  no  ethno- 
logical warrant,  and  in  localities  where  nature  and  geo- 
graphy give  them  no  right  to  exist.  Sclavonians,  Ger- 
mans, and  Italians,  crowded  together  in  one  despotic 
9 


66 


dominion  is  bad  enough;  but  Germans,  or  Italians, 
divided  up  into  twenty  petty  and  contiguous  despot- 
isms is  far  worse.  So  xVmericans,  Creoles,  and  Spaniards, 
bound  up  in  one  filibustering  empire,  would  make  a  very 
bad  amalgam ;  but  it  would  not  compare  for  mischief 
with  a  state  of  things  in  which  the  father  in  Massachu- 
setts, the  sons  in  Ohio,  brothers  in  New  York,  and  cousins 
in  Tennessee,  should  find  themselves  alien  members  of 
separate  and  ever  warring  sovereignties. 


II. 

•  jSTatioxality  and  Sovekeignty. 

"Res  publica —  populus  —  nou  omnis  hominum  coetus  quoquo  modo  congrega- 
tus,  sed  coetus  multitudinis,  juris  consensu  et  communione  sociatus. —  Cic.  Repn 
i,  24. 

A  nation  or  people  is  a  political  whole,  acknowledging 
no  outward  control  but  God,  and  having  no  inward  con- 
straint but  its  own  self-developing  organic  law. 
A  true  nation  must  have  these  six  characteristics  : 
First — It  is  severed  as  a  whole  from  all  other  political 
wholes. 

Second — It  severs  its  parts  from  all  other  wholes  or 
parts,  so  that  they  can  maintain  no  relation  to  things 
without  except  through  this  embracing  totality. 

Third — It  maintains  a  relation  to  its  own  parts,  such  as 
can  be  claimed  by  or  toward  no  other  whole  or  parts. 

Fourth — It  has  one  life  or  citizenship,  or,  which  is  the 
same  thing,  the  individual  who  is  a  citizen  in  any  one 
part  is,  ipso  facto,  and  by  no  special  grant  or  concession,  a 
citizen  in  every  other  part. 

Fifth — It  has  an  organic  law,  more  or  less  limited,  which 
is  the  highest  or  "  supreme  law  of  the  land ; " — that  is,  the 
law  every  where,  any  law  of  any  part  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding. 

Sixth — It  bas  an  administrative  power  which  is  made  to 
bear  upon  every  part,  and  upon  every  individual  citizen  of 
every  part,  in  enforcing  obedience  to  this  organic  law,  and 
all  other  laws  made  in  pursuance  thereof;  this  administra- 
tive power  being  executive,  legislative,  judicial,  either 
separate  or  blended,  held  either  by  one  man,  or  by  a  body 
or  bodies  of  men,  all  representative  of  the  one  national  will 


68 


as  it  expresses  itself  regularly  and  organically  through 
these  one  or  more  departments. 

These  elements  every  true  nation  must  possess ;  and  so, 
on  the  other  hand,  that  which  thus  possesses  them  is 
thereby  a  nation.  They  belong  to  every  nation,  irrespec- 
tive of  its  form.  Be  it  monarchy,  absolute  or  limited,  the 
limit  is  only  on  the  administrative  power,  not  on  the 
nation  itself ;  be  it  aristocracy  or  democracy,  be  it  repub- 
lican, oligarchical,  feudal,  federal,  consolidated, — these  are 
but  forms  of  the  organic  law,  varied  expressions  of  the  one 
national  will,  whether  slow  or  fast,  conservative  or  impa- 
tient, enlightened  or  ignorant ;  they  affect  not  the  idea  of 
nationality,  and  the  essential  element  that  lies  beneath  it. 
Russia  is  a  national  will,  very  ignorant,  it  may  be,  very 
inflexible,  very  slow-moving,  because  it  knows  so  little  of 
itself  and  of  its  strength ;  but,  notwithstanding,  as  truly 
a  national  will  as  the  constitutionally  regulated,  and  the 
constitutionally  uttered  will  of  England  and  the  United 
States. 

Again,  a  nation  never  creates  itself.  It  is  a  ivliole  in 
distinction  from  a  mere  sum  or  aggregate,  and  as  such  is 
the  work  of  God  and  history,  or  rather  of  God  working  in 
history.  This  has  been  mentioned  before,  but  we  would 
present  a  few  additional  thoughts,  which  could  not  well 
be  introduced  into  the  current  text  without  too  much 
impeding  the  main  argument.  This  impossibility  of  self- 
creation  is  from  the  very  nature  of  things,  since  a  whole 
cannot  be  made  of  parts  without  something  previously 
determining  that  whole  of  which  they  are  to  be  parts.  A 
mere  sum  or  aggregate  may  have  nearness  and  relation  ;  it 
may  have  something  that  may  be  called  union,  but  it  has 
no  true  unity.  It  may  arise  from  the  coming  together, 
accidental  or  otherwise,  of  independent  parts,  still  remain- 
ing independent  after  the  aggregation,  but  it  is  no  true 
coetus  (to  use  Cicero's  term)  or  congregation.  It  is,  at  the 
most,  a  mere  alliance,  arbitrary  in  its  inception,  in  its 
continuance,  and  in  its  dissolution.  This  is  the  imnctum 
differentiae  to  which  we  would  call  special  attention.  On 


69 


one  side  of  it  lies  the  notion  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  his 
allies,  on  the  other  the  true  idea  of  our  national  being,  for 
whose  life  or  death  we  are  now  contending. 

Thus  there  may  be  leagues,  partnerships,  alliances  offens- 
ive and  defensive,  or  any  gathering  of  separate  nationali- 
ties, for  longer  or  shorter  times — for  greater  or  lesser  pur- 
poses. The  European  Congresses  are  of  this  kind ;  but  the 
parties  to  such  leagues  or  alliances  never  lose  nor  impair 
their  autocratic  relations  to  each  other,  or  to  other  nation- 
alities outside  of  the  vinculum.*  The  reason  is,  there  is 
no  organic  relation,  no  organic  unity  or  wholeness.  They 
have,  in  other  words,  no  corporate  life,  simply  because  they 
do  not  act  upon  individuals,  as  our  national  government 
does,  directly,  and  without  having  to  call  in  any  other 
agency.  If  they  act  at  all,  it  must  be  an  outward,  me- 
chanical action  on  composing  masses — not  that  chemical 
vitality  which  goes  down  to  the  very  atoms  of  the  organic 
structure. 

A  national  whole,  once  born,  and  however  born — whether 
from  some  slow  process  of  history,  or  as  aided  in  its  growth 
by  shaping,  conventional,  swathing  bands — becomes  one  of 
the  powers  ordained  of  God,  and  takes  its  ijlace  among 
similar  powers  that  He  hath  constituted  in  the  earth.  It  is 
not  for  one  generation  more  than  for  another.  It  is  for  all 
generations,  and  is  to  exert  an  influence  upon  all  genera- 
tions as  they  follow  each  other — making  them  what  they 
otherwise  would  not  be ;  thus,  in  one  sense,  becoming  their 
creator  f  rather  than  their  creature  to  be  destroyed  and 
cast  away  by  them  when  they  pleased.  It  is  to  be  the  edu- 
cator of  the  unborn ;  and  every  new  growth  that  thus  con- 

*  Each  of  these  parties  may  be,  at  the  same  time,  parties  to  other  alliances,  com- 
posed of  other  nationalities,  and  having  in  view  other  purposes. 

f  In  this  sense  "we  are  born  of  the  law,"  as  Socrates  most  impressively  argues 
in  the  Crito.  It  is  a  noble  passage,  in  which  "the  Laws"  (or  the  Government)  are 
apostrophised,  and  represented  as  expostulating  with  the  man  who  is  claiming  the 
right  to  violate  them.  "You  owe  us  all"  (say  the  oi  No/xoi) ;  "we  are  the  foun- 
dation of  all;  from  us  comes  the  family;  from  us  comes  the  institution  of  marriage  ; 
ds  syevv^daixsv  q^eig — we  have  begotten  you ;  and  after  you  were  born,  from  us 
you  received  your  nurture  and  education."  Such  is  the  tenure  of  citizenship. 
Crito,  50  D. 


70 


tinually  comes  out  of  the  future  so  strengthens  the  national 
growth,  so  perfects  its  form  and  symmetry,  so  deepens  the 
roots  of  its  vitality,  that  it  becomes  more  legitimate,  more 
holy,  more  an  object  of  reverence  as  the  work  of  God,  with 
every  year  of  its  existence.  It  is  a  much  greater  crime  to 
assail  the  life  of  our  nation  now,  than  it  would  have  been 
sixty  years  ago. 

As  such  "power  ordained  of  God,"  a  nation  is  an 
intelligence,  a  will,  and  a  force.  It  has  a  moral  char- 
acter, and  an  accountability.  When  once  born,  by  what- 
ever quickening  event  in  history  that  may  have  been, 
it  is  in  some  things  left  to  itself,  like  any  other  moral  agent. 
The  form  it  shall  assume  and  the  power  it  shall  exercise, 
as  monarchical,  democratic,  republican,  flexible  or  consoli- 
dated, is  afterwards,  in  good  measure,  its  own  shaping 
work,  though  even  this,  in  the  start,  is  very  much  affected 
by  the  same  outward  formative  power  which  gave  it  its 
historical  and  geographical  totality. 

But  the  national  essence  is  irrespective  of  all  these  forms, 
and  so  is  the  national  sovereignty.  Our  political  habits 
of  thought  make  us  peculiarly  the  subjects  of  delusion 
here.  Some  would  be  startled  at  the  idea  that  our  repub- 
lican nation,  with  all  its  subdivisions  of  political  agency, 
with  all  its  checks  and  limitations,  is  as  absolute  a  power 
and  as  absolute  a  sovereignty  as  that  of  France  or  Eussia. 
A  little  thought,  however,  enables  us  to  go  beyond  the  form 
into  the  substance  of  this  matter.  The  sovereignty  in  every 
state  is  the  national  mind,  acting  through  the  national 
will,  and  aided  by  the  national  force.  But  this  mind  and 
will  are  very  different  in  different  states.  In  one  it 
is  an  ignorant  mind  and  will,  ferocious  or  stupid,  and 
acting  by  no  rule.  It  is  that  lowest  form  of  a  will 
that  is  hardly  distinguishable  from  impulse,  appetite  or 
bare  volition.  It  is  a  lawless  mind  and  will,  whether  it 
take  the  form  of  a  wild  impulsive  democracy,  or  of  an 
unlimited  despotism,  in  which  form  it  is  the  same  unrea- 
soning national  power  represented  by  one  man.  In  another, 
the  mind  of  the  state  is  the  law, — vofc  avsu  6pi!sws,  "mind 


71 


without  passion,"  as  Aristotle  defines  it* — the  settled 
law  of  the  state,  fundamental,  organic,  general,  specific, 
local  and  municipal,  ordaining,  originating,  permitting. 
Throuah  this  the  nation  thinks  and  wills  and  acts,  this  is 
the  true  public  sentiment,  this  is  the  true  vox  populi,  and 
so  far  as  such  is  the  meaning  and  realization  of  the  term, 
does  it  approach  to  being  what  it  is  so  often  falsely, called, 
"  the  voice  of  God."  It  is  not  simply  lawless  volition, 
but  a  true  will,  voluntas  instead  of  voluntas — a  will  of 
reason,  quae  quid  cum  ratione  desiderata  Such  a  will 
of  such  a  state  is  simply  the  expression  of  the  law,  or  cor- 
porate reason,  and  the  providing  the  forces  necessary  to 
secure  its  healthy  action,  its  constant  organic  movement, 
in  all  its  varied  departments. 

And  so  it  is  with  what  is  called  the  sovereignty.  This 
is  as  great,  as  absolute,  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  If 
there  be  any  difference  in  this  respect,  we  may  say  that  in 
the  constitutional  state,  there  is  in  fact,  a  higher  sove- 
reignty, inasmuch  as  it  is  occupied  with  higher  objects, 
and  so  requiring,  in  truth,  a  higher  power.  A  rational  or 
constitutional  nation  limits  itself,  and  that  is  what  the 
lawless  sovereign  (be  it  a  lawless  people  or  one  man  repre- 
senting such  lawless  people),  cannot  do, — is,  in  fact,  too 
weak  to  do.  The  power  thus  employed  may  be  called 
latent,  like  latent  heat  in  chemistry,  but  it  is  by  no  means 
lost.  There  comes  in  here  that  analogy,  which  has  been 
such  a  favorite  in  the  best  political  writings  (whether  literal 
or  allegorical),  from  Plato's  Eepublic  to  Bunyan's  City  of 
Mausoul.  It  is  the  parallel  between  the  state  and  the 
individual  spirit, — the  inward  government  of  one  soul, 
and  the  government  of  many  souls  linked  together  in  one 
<oX»r£jpoa,J  or  political  life  transcending  that  of  the  indi- 
vidual. The  one  state  is  like  the  wild  irrational  man  who 
has  no  rule  or  rules  of  conduct  which  he  has  laid  upon 
himself — who  lives  by  the  day,  by  the  hour,  having 

*  Politica  Lib.,  Ill,  sec.  XI.  \  Cicero. 

\  See  Philippians.  iii:  20,  where  the  word  is  used  of  the  still  higher  oneness,  or 
community,  of  the  heavenly  life  in  the  Church. 


72 


nothing  to  guide  him  but  the  impulses  and  appetites  of 
the  present  moment.  The  other  is  the  rational  man  who 
limits  himself,  who  has  his  settled  principles  of  action, 
who  loves  obedience  to  law  anil  reason,  as  the  only  true 
liberty  through  which  he  is  brought  into  harmony  and 
free  communion  with  all  law  loving  souls  throughout  the 
universe.  How  absurd  to  say  that  this  man  has  less 
power,  less  sovereignty  than  the  other,  or  is  less  absolute 
in  the  exercise  of  it.  And  so  with  nations.  A  constitu- 
tional or  republican  nation  that  thus  limits  itself,  is  a 
higher  thing,  a  stronger  thing,  in  every  way  a  more  abso- 
lute nation,  than  a  perfectly  unchecked  democracy,  or 
what  is  called  an  absolute  monarchy. 

In  the  same  manner,  too,  is  its  sovereignty  a  higher 
sovereignty.  Instead  of  being  lost,  a  great  portion  of  it, 
the  higher  portion  of  it,  is  employed  in  this  very  limita- 
tion. We  mean  by  this  sovereignty  the  whole  national 
organization  taken  as  one,  and  not  the  supremacy  of  any 
one  department  over  the  others.  And  here  we  may  correct 
a  misconception  which  has  arisen  from  some  things  too 
generally  expressed.  The  writer  has  been  charged  with 
making  the  government  at  Washington  the  sovereign,  or 
sovereignty,  of  the  nation,  to  the  undue  depression  of  the 
state  governments.  This  is  not  his  idea.  It  is  the  nation 
that  is  sovereign,  the  nation  lying  back  of  all,  the  one  his- 
toric nation,  one  and  indivisible,  of  which  the  general 
government  at  Washington  is  but  a  creation  for  general 
purposes,  and  the  state  governments,  growths,  permissions, 
developments,  for  internal,  special  and  local  purposes. 
One  has  not  come  from  the  other.  The  states  no  more 
made  the  national  government  what  it  now  is,  than  the 
national  government  made  the  states  wiiat  they  now  are. 
They  are  both  alike,  the  work  of  history,  the  development 
of  one  great  "people,  ordaining  and  establishing"  institu- 
tions, general  and  local,  "  for  themselves  and  their  poster- 
ity."*   The  idea  for  which  we  are  contending  is  fully 

*  The  mode  of  ratification  by  states  does  not  at  all  interfere  with  this  view.  That 
was  a  mere  matter -of  convenience,  and  the  convention  might  just  as  well  have  pro- 


73 


conserved  when  we  hold  to  the  nation,  however  born,  as  one 
and  indivisible — having  thus  acquired  from  its  historic 
birth,  and  the  ordinance  of  God,  the  right  to  defend  this 
national  oneness  as  the  conservator  of  all  inferior  national 
good. 

posed  a  general  popular  vote,  or  any  other  mode.  The  true  mind  of  the  nation 
having  been,  in  any  way,  sufficiently  ascertained,  refusing  sections  might  and 
should  have  been  compelled  to  come  in,  on  the  same  grounds  of  national  necessity 
that  now  justifies  the  compelling  them  to  stay  in.  Conciliation  was,  doubtless, 
very  proper ;  but  can  any  one  believe  that,  after  our  great  birth  struggle  had  made 
us  a  nation,  acknowledged  by  and  dealing  with  the  other  nations  of  the  earth,  and 
after  the  national  will,  clearly  manifested,  had  adopted  a  certain  form  of  govern- 
ment, New  Jersey  would  have  been  allowed  to  interpose  a  sovereignty  betweeu  the 
Delaware  and  Hudson  rivers,  or  Maryland,  to  take  to  herself  the  Chesapeake  bay, 
or  Rhode  Island,  the  isles  and  harbors  of  the  Narragansett  ?  So  Georgia  was 
indulged,  but  she  never  would  have  been,  and  never  ought  to  have  been  permitted 
to  play  sovereign  in  such  a  way  as  to  expose  a  most  important  angle  of  the  great 
territory  to  the  easy  invasion  of  any  foreign  power  with  whom  she  might  choose  to 
make  alliance. 

Does  this  doctrine  seem  startling  ?  then  we  say  that  it  has  been  carried  by  men 
whom  even  Chicago  would  delight  to  honor,  to  an  extreme  far  beyond  where  a 
sober  national  man  would  have  ever  dared  to  go.  They  have  even  applied  it  to 
territory  lying  clean  outside  of  anything  regarded  as  the  national  boundary,  either 
by  ourselves  or  the  mother  country.  And  all  this  on  the  plea  of  nationality,  and 
of  preserving  our  national  existence.  Hear  what  is  said  by  James  Buchanan,  John 
T.  Mason,  and  Pierre  Soule,  in  their  famous  Ostend  manifesto:  "It  must  be  clear 
to  every  reflecting  mind  that  from  the  peculiarity  of  its  geographical  position,  and 
the  considerations  attendant  upon  it,  Cuba  is  as  necessary  to  the  North  American 
Republic  as  any  of  its  present  members.  From  its  locality  it  commands  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  the  immense  trade  that  must  seek  this  avenue  to  the  ocean," 
&c.,  &e.  "The  Union  can  never  enjoy  repose,  nor  possess  reliable  security,  as  long 
as  Cuba  is  not  embraced  within  its  boundaries."  And  then  they  proceed  to  say : 
♦'Self-preservation  is  the  first  law  of  nature,  with  states  as  well  as  with  individuals. 
All  nations  have  acted  upon  this  maxim.  Does  Cuba,  then,  in  the  possession  of 
Spain,  seriously  endanger  our  internal  peace,  and  the  existence  of  our  cherished 
Union  ?  Should  this  question  be  answered  in  the  affirmative,  then,  by  every  law^ 
human  and  divine,  we  shall  be  justified  in  luresting  it  from  Spain,  and  this  upon  the 
very  same  principle  that  would  justify  an  individual  in  tearing  down  the  burning 
house  of  his  neighbor,  if  there  were  no  other  means  of  preventing  the  flames  from 
destroying  his  own  house." 

How  very  national  these  men  when  it  was  a  slave  nation  (as  they  regarded  it) 
to  be  preserved !  How  correct  the  reasoning,  too,  if  the  premises  were  not  so  vil- 
lainous !  There  is  no  need  to  direct  the  reader  in  the  application.  Every  one  can 
see  how  the  strength  of  this  argument  is  increased,  a  fortiori  atque  a  fortissimo, 
when  it  is  used,  not  for  acquiring  foreign  territory  by  force,  but  for  simply  retain- 
ing that  which  for  eighty  years  had  lain  within  our  acknowledged  nationality. 
How  dear  to  these  men  were  "the  repose  and  security  of  our  cherished  Union  !" 
Could  they  have  framed  a  stronger  argument  against  secession  ?  And  yet  they  are 
10 


74 


The  national  sovereignty  thus  viewed  is  identical  with 
this  national  oneness,  and  so  it  is  everywhere  present, 
though  felt  in  different  ways,  and  exercised  through 
widely  different  channels.  The  state  governments  are 
parts  of  the  grand  scheme ;  the  national  constitution  is  a 
part  of  the  constitution  of  each  state,  sworn  to  by  all 
officeholders  in  each  state ;  so  that  the  men  who  defy  it 
anywhere  do  thereby  cast  ofY  the  constitutions  of  the 
states  in  which  they  reside,  leaving  them  in  lawlessness 
and  anarchy.  Viewing  the  one  national  sovereignty, 
therefore,  in  its  widest  aspect,  as  thus  diffusing  itself 
throughout,  it  is  the  maintaining,  the  conserving,  and  so 
the  doing,  of  everything  which  would  not  be  so  done,  or 
which  would  have  no  security  for  being  so  done,  if  these 
United  States*  were  not  one  great  and  mighty  power, 
defending  against  all  injury  from  without,  aud  holding 
together  all  that  is  sound  and  beneficent  within.  Thus 
conservatively  does  this  one  sovereignty,  of  this  one  na- 
tion, permeate  all  its  life.  The  government  at  Washing- 
ton is  but  one  expression  of  it.  It  is  the  nation,  too  (not 
the  government  at  Washington),  that  rules  in  the  city  and 
in  the  state.  We  may  go  still  lower  than  this.  It  is  felt, 
if  not  seen,  in  the  proceedings  of  every  county,  town  and 
school  district.  In  ways  innumerable  are  all  these  differ- 
ent from  what  they  would  be  if  there  were  no  such  great 
national  unity  lying  back  of  all  and  over  all.  Its  unseen 
efficacy  penetrates  the  school-room,  the  family,  and  the 
cradle.  But  there  is  one  theatre  in  which  it  is  more  visibly 
manifest.   We  mean  in  the  doings  of  the  general  govern- 

all  secessionists.  Almost  all  who  favored  the  measure  are  secessionists.  They 
would  have  bought  Cuba  at  the  cost  of  $200,000,000,  or  at  the  still  heavier  expense 
of  a  war  with  Spain — and  this  for  the  safety  of  our  ''cherished  republic," — whilst, 
at  the  same  time,  holding  that  Cuba,  after  having  been  thus  bought,  or  "wrested," 
might,  the  next  day,  have  seceded,  declared  itself  independent,  or  returned  again  to 
Spain.    Did  human  wickedness  ever  before  so  stultify  the  human  reason  ? 

*  Mr.  Benjamin,  in  his  colloquy  with  Mr.  Gilmore,  seemed  to  attach  much  im- 
portance to  the  plurality  of  our  national  name,  as  favoring  the  idea  of  plurality  of 
sovereignty.  The  argument  is  a  very  puerile  one.  Plurality  of  sovereignty  is  an 
absurdity  in  itself.  The  position,  moreover,  is  in  the  face  of  history.  It  would 
destroy  the  nationality  of  Holland  and  Switzerland. 


ment,  though  this  is  only  one  of  the  national  depart- 
ments. The  action  of  that  general  government,  in  ordinary 
times,  does  not  affect,  or  but  little  affects,  the  course 
of  the  local  administrations,  from  the  state  and  city  down 
to  the  family.  It  is  occupied  with  our  foreign  relations, 
or  with  the  higher  internal  relations  of  the  greater  national 
parte.  But  it  should  never  be  forgotten  that  there  is  com- 
mitted to  this  general  government,  and  to  the  executive 
and  legislative  power  that  administer  it,  the  awful  charge 
of  national  conservation,  and  that  there  come  times  when 
this  charge  becomes  paramount  to  all  others ;  we  may 
even  say,  absorbs  all  others.  At  other  times,  the  whole 
machinery,  vast  and  complicated  as  it  is,  seems  to  go 
on  of  itself.  Every  thing  moves  in  its  own  orbit,  and  so 
smooth  and  easy  is  the  process,  that  we  almost  forget  the 
great  national  force  that  is  silently  working  underneath  it 
all.  The  government  at  Washington  appears  only  as  a 
regulator,  and  even  of  that  there  seems  to  be  hardly  any 
need ;  so  well  does  each  part  carry  on  the  motion  that  has 
been  given  to  it.  But  there  is  still  this  mighty  power  of 
conservation,  which  some  foreign  attack,  or  the  breaking 
of  some  inward  wheel,  may  summon  forth  in  all  its  im- 
perishable energy.  At  such  a  time,  every  eye  is  turned 
towards  this  central  power.  The  collected  sovereignty  of 
the  nation  seems  to  manifest  itself  there,  as  though,  com- 
paratively, it  were  nowhere  else.  The  national  life  is  at 
stake,  and  to  resist  it  in  this  its  desperate  struggle  for 
existence — to  resist  the  power  to  whom  the  defense  of  this 
life  is  so  directly  committed — to  do  it  under  any  frivolous 
pretense  of  "  state  rights,"  or  individual  rights,  which  are 
all  lost  in  the  loss  of  that  which  gives  them  their  chief 
value,  is  suicidal  madness,  as  well  as  the  direst  treason. 

Even  without  a  written  provision  of  the  constitution, 
this  great  reserve  of  power  is  there.  It  must  be  there,  for 
it  is  nowhere  else,  and  the  nation  must  live,  at  all  hazards. 
The  building  must  be  saved,  however  ruined  and  blackened 
in  the  effort  to  rescue  it  from  the  flames.  It  belongs  to 
the  very  essence  of  nationality  that  it  should  preserve  its 


76 


own  being.  But  there  is  no  need  of  any  cavil  here.  The 
power  has  been  clearly  given,  whether  we  regard  it  as  a 
necessary  grant  or  as  an  exercise  of  over-caution.  When 
Congress  is  empowered  to  suspend  the  writ  of  habeas  cor- 
pus,  thereby  putting  individual  liberty  in  constraint  for  the 
public  good — when  the  President  is  made  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States,  and 
empowered  to  suppress  insurrections,  it  is  simply  giving 
him  the  physical  force  of  the  nation,  in  its  maximum  state, 
if  need  be,  to  be  employed  in  any  way  that  may  be  most 
available,  and  soonest  available,  for  the  accomplishment 
of  that  object.  There  is  no  limit  to  it  but  its  necessities. 
If  we  are  jealous  of  this  power,  let  us  give  it  all  our  aid 
that  its  exercise  may  be  short,  and  the  rebellion  soonest 
quelled ;  so  that  the  dangerous  weapon  may  drop  from  his 
hands,  and  our  President "  go  in  and  out  before  us  "  as  in 
other  days  of  security  and  peace.  Has  the  occasion  arisen  ? 
Then  this  central  government,  more  than  all  things,  repre- 
sents the  sovereignty  of  the  nation.  The  force  before 
diffused  through  civil  life  is  now  gathered  and  condensed 
in  the  military  power.  The  latent  energies  of  the  nation 
come  forth,  no  longer  limiting  themselves,  nor 

"  checking 
Their  thunders  in  mid  volley," 

but  "putting  forth  all  their  might,"  till  vile  rebellion, 

"  Exhausted,  spiritless,  afflicted,  fallen," 

shall  confess  that  as  no  crime  is  so  great  as  insurrection 
against  such  a  government,  so  no  exercise  of  sovereignty 
can  be  in  excess,  when  demanded  for  its  suppression. 

There  can  be  no  difference  here  between  republican 
governments  and  those  of  any  other  form.  The  military 
power  is  simply  the  necessary  force  required  to  accomplish 
a  certain  object  in  the  shortest  time.  In  granting  this,  all 
is  granted  that  by  the  laws  of  war  in  every  nation  have 
been  deemed  necessary  to  subdue  an  invading  or  rebellious 
foe.  It  takes  life,  which  is  the  highest,  and,  of  course,  all 
lower  things,  institutions  of  every  kind,  state  rights  of 
every  kind,  individual  rights  of  every  kind,  go  down  before 


77 


it  whenever  they  stand  in  its  way.  The  nation  must  be 
saved — the  truth  is  solemn  enough  to  hear  repetition — the 
nation  must  be  saved,  even  if  the  effort  call  forth  all  that 
latent  power  and  latent  sovereignty  which  in  ordinary  times 
slumber  so  placidly, — even  as  the  individual  strength,  and 
the  individual  will,  so  hold  themselves  in  abeyance  during 
the  serene  hours  of  our  unharmed,  meditative  life,  that 
we  are  hardly  conscious  of  their  possession.  The  great 
sovereignty,  rationally  limiting  itself  to  its  usual  exercise, 
will  be  all  the  more  gentle  in  proportion  to  its  confidence 
in  its  own  strength;  for  our  reasoning  is  grounded  on  the 
assumption  that  we  are  truly  a  rational  and  intelligent 
people,  proved  to  be  such  by  the  fact  that,  for  the  sake  of 
liberty,  we  put  down  an  irrational  and  ferocious  rebellion. 
Despotism  is  cruel,  because  it  is  ever  fearful  and  suspicious. 
It  is  yet  to  be  seen  whether,  in  a  true  constitutional  govern- 
ment, this  power  of  self-preservation  is  inconsistent  with 
its  ordinary  limiting  idea;  or  whether,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  more  valuable  the  organization  the  greater  the  inherent 
resistance  it  makes  to  its  own  hurt  and  dissolution.  The 
best  and  highest  things  are  most  tenacious  of  life.  Surely 
the  law  of  political  society  cannot  be  so  directly  opposite 
to  that  which  prevails  throughout  the  physical  world. 


III. 


The  Eight  of  Bevolution. 

Eevoltttion  is  never  a  right  but  when  and  where  it  is 
a  duty.  This  proposition,  which  has  been  already  concisely 
given,  page  58,  disposes  at  once  of  a  great  part  of  the 
vexed  question  that  has  arisen  on  this  troublesome  word. 
Eevolution  can  never  be  an  abstract  or  unconditional 
right — that  is,  a  right  to  be  exercised  whenever  a  party 
pleases,  or  without  reference  to  any  moral  right  in  the 
antecedents  out  of  which  it  arises.  A  people,  whether 
majority  or  minority,  have  no  right  to  change  their  govern- 
ment violently — that  is,  in  some  manner  not  growing  out 
of  its  existing  organic  law — simply  because  they  please  to 
do  so.  When  this  is  done,  it  can  only  be  as  a  duty — the 
times,  the  agents,  and  the  results  of  which  are  unmistaka- 
bly determined  in  the  Providence  of  God — a  most  solemn 
duty,  upon  which  men  enter  religiously,  prayerfully,  with 
a  reverent  sense  of  high  responsibility  that  gladly  would 
have  been,  but  cannot  be  avoided.  Unless  the  idea  is  thus 
checked,  government  on  the  earth  becomes  an  impossi- 
bility, especially  when  the  right  is  claimed  as  an  abstract 
right  for  any  part,  at  any  time,  to  separate  itself  from  a 
known  historical  and  political  whole.  If  it  belongs  to  any 
part,  it  belongs  equally  to  any  part  of  any  part,  and  so  on, 
ad  infinitum.  Anarchy,  disintegration,  disorganization, 
total  and  remediless,  is  the  only  end  of  such  a  process. 

Wholes  and  parts  are  both  the  work  of  history,  or,  if 
there  be  any  difference  in  this  respect,  it  is  greatly  in  favor 
of  the  former.  There  is  a  series  of  events,  such  as  land 
patents,  manor  grants,  Indian  purchases,  &c,  that  make 
New  York  what  it  is,  with  its  strange,  arbitrary,  incon- 


79 


venient,  triangular-shape.  There  is  a  much  higher  order 
of  events,  discoveries,  settlements,  military  holdings, 
foreign  wars,  colonial  congresses,  ending  in  what  is  called 
our  revolution,  and  all  confirmed  at  last  by  the  most 
solemn  constitutional  compacts,  followed  by  eighty  years 
of  vigorous  national  life,  that  have,  together,  made  the 
United  States  what  it  is,  with  its  unsurpassed  geographi- 
cal unity  and  beauty  as  it  lies  on  the  map  of  the  globe. 
What  sacredness,  then,  in  state  lines  that  does  not  belong, 
in  a  still  higher  degree,  to  the  national  boundaries  ? 

The  "  state  rights"  doctrine,  if  it  mean  simply  that  the 
political  divisions  we  call  states  have  certain  political  rights, 
which  it  would  be  wrong  to  violate,  is  too  poor  a  thing  for 
controversy.  So  have  cities,  counties,  corporations,  indi- 
viduals. Are  these  lower  powers  creations  ?  So,  also,  are 
the  states — creations,  not  of  the  general  government,  but 
created  along  with  it,  by  outside  historical  influences  mak- 
ing each  state — and  the  general  nationality  no  less — -just 
what  they  are.  Besides,  it  is  a  fact  that  some  of  our 
smaller  municipal  powers,  some  of  our  cities,  for  example, 
and  even  some  of  the  great  land  patents,  are  older  than 
the  states  in  which  they  lie.  They  are,  historically,  form- 
ative of  the  states,  instead  of  being  created  ly  them.  The 
city  of  Xew  York  is  older  than  the  state  of  Xew  York,  and 
may  claim,  with  some  reason,  to  have  powers  from  an 
older  sovereignty.  The  city  had  a  government  and  a 
defining  charter,  with  defined  territory  and  jurisdiction, 
when  the  state  had  no  known  boundary  north  and  west. 
It  had  a  political  status,  when  that  curious  star-formed 
shape,  as  we  find  it  now  on  the  map  (a  shape  not  given  to 
the  state  by  any  acts  of  its  sovereign  people,  but  formed 
wholly  from  without)  had  not  yet  emerged  from  the 
historical  chaos. 

In  certain  aspects  it  becomes  the  very  sublime  of  impu- 
dence, this  magnifying  of  state  lines,  or  the  attaching  a 
sacredness  to  the  state  life  and  state  authority,  which  is 
denied,  or  undervalued,  in  respect  to  the  great  embracing 
nation — as  though  what  would  be  a  perfect  right,  or  at 


80 


least  a  very  venial  offense,  as  against  the  greater,  would 
be  the  direst  treason  as  against  the  less.  Virginia  rebels 
against  the  United  States  —  it  is  no  true  nation,  she  says; 
and  therefore  she  consults  her  convenience,  or  her  caprice, 
as  to  whether  she  shall  stay  in  it  or  not.  But  Iter  unity, 
her  "  Old  Dominion,"  is  not  to  be  violated.  Her  own  arti- 
ficial boundary,  though  originally  founded  on  gross  geo- 
graphical errors,  is  a  very  sacred  thing.  It  is  sacrilege  to 
meddle  with  it.  This  most  artificial  Virginia,  with  her 
Pan-handle*  running  back  of  Maryland,  and  making  a 
notch  between  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  —  this  most  irregu- 
lar "  Old  Dominion  "  calls  the  people  of  West  Virginia 
traitors,  and  threatens  them  with  death,  and  has  put  many 
of  them  to  death,  for  treason  against  her,  although  they 
are  naturally  and  socially  divided  from  her.  She  accuses 
them  of  the  vilest  ingratitude  to  their  old  mother,  because 
they  want  to  keep  their  Pan-handle  to  themselves,  and 
have  their  own  social  institutions,  without  the  interference 
of  the  slaveholders  of  Accomac  or  the  James  river.  Siie 
does  this  whilst  she  herself  claims,  at  her  pleasure,  and  for 
no  other  reason  than  her  pleasure,  to  break  out  of  what,  as 
a  whole,  is  the  closest  historical  and  geographical  unity  on 
earth.  Nay,  more ;  she  is  especially  angry,  and  most  vehe- 
ment in  her  cry  of  treason,  because  this  claimed  portion 
refuses  to  follow  her  in  the  guilt  of  treason  to  that  greater 

*  Through  what  intricacies  of  land  patents  and  surveyors'  lines  this  deformed 
projection  got  its  shape,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  say.  But  Virginia  holds  to  it  as 
tenaciously  as  to  the  shore  of  the  Chesapeake.  Should  the  inhabitants  of  the  Pan- 
handle contend,  ever  so  earnestly,  that  it  is  for  their  convenience  to  be  connected 
politically  with  Pennsylvania  or  Ohio,  or  to  form  a  little  commonwealth  by  them- 
selves, it  is  of  no  avail  against  this  magic  sovereignty  of  Virginia.  They  might 
maintain  that  they  knew  nothing  of  the  acts  that  gave  rise  to  this  inconvenient 
political  connection  —  that  they  were  not  bound  by  any  doings  of  their  fathers, 
even  if  their  fathers  had  anything  to  do  in  the  premises.  They  might  plead  dis- 
similarity of  soil,  productions,  and  social  life ;  and,  on  all  these  grounds,  claim  "  the 
right  of  self-government."  Now,  on  what  principle  of  reasoning  shall  any  one 
contend  that  such  Pan-handle  demand,  as  against  Virginia,  is  notf  as  good,  histori-^ 
cally,  geographically,  and  in  every  way,  as  Virginia's  "  right  of  revolution  "  against 
the  greater,  the  more  solemn  historical  whole  of  the  United  States, — with  this 
great  difference  against  Virginia,  that  her  rebellion  is  not  only  a  war  with  his- 
tory and  geography,  but  a  violation  of  the  most  solemn  compacts  and  oft-repeated 
oaths  by  which  historical  formations  were  ever  ratified  and  confirmed. 


81 


allegiance  which  both  alike  owe  to  the  United  States.  It 
suggests  the  thought  that  this  case  of  Western  Virginia 
may  have  been  providentially  permitted  to  arise,  to  show 
the  absurdity  of  all  this  reasoning  about  state  sovereignty 
and  state  allegiance,  which  has  been  so  mischievously  dis- 
organizing in  our  land.  The  constitution  of  the  United 
States  is  part  of  the  constitution  of  Virginia.  As  such,  she 
has  required  these  inhabitants  of  West  Virginia,  over  and 
over  again,  to  swear  to  its  maintenance  before  they  could 
be  permitted  to  hold  any  state  office ;  and  now  she  turns 
round  and  threatens  them  with  the  punishment  of  death 
for  keeping  the  very  oath  she  had  imposed ! 

We  might  dwell  on  this  branch  of  our  argument  at 
greater  length,  but  the  hints  given  are  sufficient  to  show 
the  nature  of  the  reasoning,  and  its  application  to  every 
social  subdivision,  until  we  come  down  to  an  entire  disin- 
tegration into  families  and  individual  men.  The  conclu- 
sion to  which  it  brings  us  is  inevitable.  There  can  be  no 
government ;  political  organization  must  ever  be  the  merest 
accident  of  an  accident ;  or  there  is  no  such  abstract  right 
of  revolution,  founded  on  the  right  of  "  self-go vernui en t" 
as  something  inherent  in  every  part.  There  must  be  some 
intolerable  grievance,  or  some  immense  and  unmistakable 
good,  that  transforms  the  fancied  right  into  an  urgent 
duty.  The  x>rovidence  of  God  determines  this,  and  gene- 
rally makes  it  clear.  It  is  seen  in  the  kind  of  men  that 
are  raised  up  for  such  a  purpose,  and  in  all  that  gives  to 
such  a  period  and  to  such  men  the  aspect  of  the  heroic  and 
the  reverence  of  mankind. 

In  the  case  of  the  South,  there  could  be  no  such  griev- 
ance, for  a  reason  that  has  been  often  stated,  that  the  gov- 
ernment against  which  this  right  of  revolution  is  claimed, 
is  purely  republican,  with  a  most  flexible  organic  mode 
through  which  the  national  mind  and  will  can  ever  present 
their  fair  expression.  In  other  political  forms,  irregular 
action  may  be  demanded,  because  the  organic  action  is  too 
slow,  or  so  clogged  that  the  only  way  to  healthy  political 
life  is  through  a  temporary  breakage  of  the  ill-working 
11 


82 


machinery.  The  disease,  in  this  case,  is  in  the  organiza- 
tion, and  revolution  is  the  cure.  Republican  govern- 
ments, on  the  other  hand,  are  established  for  the  very 
purpose  of  obviating  any  such  necessity.  This  is  the 
great  argument  in  their  favor.  Without  it  they  are  no 
better  than  monarchies  in  regard  to  the  chief  excellence 
claimed  for  them,  whilst  inferior  in  other  elements  of 
stable  and  healthy  government,  for  which  this  organic 
remedy,  it  was  thought,  would  more  than  compensate. 
Thus  viewed,  then,  in  their  relation  to  the  two  forms,  the 
two  ideas  change  names  and  places.  What  is  a  means  of 
health  in  the  one  case,  becomes  a  deadly  poison  in  the 
other.  In  a  republican  state  revolution  is  the  disease,  and 
the  healthy  life  of  the  nation  demands  that  the  evil  spirit, 
with  its  false  claim  and  principle,  should  be  wholly  exor- 
cised from  the  soul  and  body  politic. 

But  let  us  take  a  more  practical  view  of  this  vexed 
question.  Confusion  has  arisen  from  wrong  naming. 
Everything  is  not  a  revolution  that  is  so-called.  The 
name  was  unfortunately  given  to  our  national  birth-strug- 
gle, and  much  false  reasoning  has  been  the  consequence. 
It  certainly  was  not  such  a  revolution  as  those  that  have 
taken  place  in  England  and  France.  In  fact  nothing  like  it 
had  ever  before  existed,  in  any  noticeable  sense,  in  human 
history.  It  stands  by  itself  as  a  case  of  colonial  separa- 
tion, violent  indeed,  because  resisted,  but  coming  in  the 
natural  order  of  things,  and  therefore  intrinsically  right. 
The  colonial  relation  has  ever  been  regarded  as  analogous 
to  the  parental.  Like  that,  too,  it  is  expected  in  time  to 
be  dissolved,  socially  and  politically,  though  ever  preserv- 
ing the  kindred  tie.  Thus  the  settlement  of  a  colony  is 
the  planting  of  a  future  nation,  divided  geographically, 
and  destined,  in  its  very  inceptive  idea,  for  political  sever- 
ance, though  retaining  still  the  other  ethnological  relations. 
A  common  speech,  a  common  lineage,  a  convenient  geo- 
graphical position  adapted  to  the  development  of  inward 
and  outward  commerce, — these  are  the  conditions  of  na- 
tionality, and  when  the  last  demands  it,  there  is  ground 


83 


for  severance,  even  though  the  first  two  are  unchanged. 
So  has  it  been  held  from  the  beginning,  or  since  the  human 
race  commenced  its  long  work  of  subduing  and  settling  all 
parts  of  the  earth,  "every  one  after  its  tongue,  after  their 
families,  in  their  nations."  The  Greeks  had  the  true  colo- 
nial idea,  however  great  the  errors  they  committed  in  re- 
spect to  their  home  relations.  We  especially  cite  them, 
because  the  Eomans  had  no  colonies  in  this  true  sense  of 
the  term.  They  were  a  conquering  people,  and  their  colo- 
nial, especially  their  extra-Italian  ones,  were,  for  the  most 
part,  mere  military  stations.  Their  mission  was  "  to  sub- 
due," rather  than  cultivate  and  settle  the  earth.  Modern  his- 
tory has  returned,  in  some  measure,  to  the  more  natural 
and  civilizing  Greek  idea,  though  somewhat  modified  by 
the  selfish,  empire-extending  Eoman  spirit.  There  has  been 
too  much  reference  to  the  power  and  wealth  of  the  parent 
state.  Yet  still  the  true  notion  of  the  colony  has  not  been 
lost,  and  our  own  signal  assertion  of  it  will  probably  be 
the  principal  means  of  restoring  it  to  the  world  in  all  its 
political  integrity.  What  the  colonial  idea  truly  is,  ap- 
pears in  the  established  language  by  which  it  is  character- 
ized, even  when  abused.  Webster  well  defines  a  colony 
as  "a  company  of  people  transplanted  from  their  mother 
country  to  a  remote  country  to  cultivate  it,  (colonia,  from 
colo,)  and  remaining  subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  pa- 
rent state ;  when  such  settlements  cease  to  be  subject  to 
the  parent  state  they  are  no  longer  colonies."  It  is  a  child 
going  to  a  new  home,  receiving  help  for  a  time,  but  with 
an  undoubted  looking  to  future  independence.  This  idea 
of  relationship,  and  yet  of  expatriation,  is  most  affectingly 
presented  in  some  of  the  religious  ceremonies  that  an- 
ciently took  place  in  the  founding  of  such  a  foreign  house- 
hold. They  carried  with  them  the  sacra  patria,  "the 
sacred  things  of  the  father  land" — whatever  was  held  in 
highest  reverence  and  would  longest  preserve  the  home 
feeling,  whilst,  at  the  same  time,  most  clearly  indicating 
the  mutually  cherished  idea  of  a  new  home,  a  new  national 
life,  of  which  these  ceremonies  and  "  sacred  paternities" 


84 


were  the  significant  symbols.  Chief  among  these  was  the 
solemn  transportation  of  the  "sacred  lire,"  kindled  from 
the  most  interior  shrine,  or  religions  hearth,  of  the  mother 
city  (c  penetrali  url)is  Hep  romp  turn  ct  accensum),  and  ever  to 
be  kept  alive  in  the  distant  land  to  which  they  were  going. 
Thucydides  calls  it  craXaioj  vaj*o£,  "the  ancient  colonizing 
law."*  It  had  the  same .  significance  as  "the  nuptial 
torch"  given  to  the  newly  married,  the  same  idea  of  a  new 
life  coming  out  of  the  old,  and  carrying  on  the  succession 
of  individual  and  national  births.  So  also  it  was  the  cus- 
tom, after  the  colony  was  settled,  to  send  back  legates,  in 
majorem patriam,  to  the  "old  country,"  on  certain  solemn 
occasions,  to  take  part  in  its  public  sacrifices — thus  renew- 
ing the  flame  from  its  primeval  source. 

The  outward  is  ever  flowing,  the  inward  meaning  stands 
the  same  for  all  men  and  for  all  ages.  Our  fathers  took 
from  the  altars  of  England  the  sacred  lire  of  her  religious 
and  political  institutions ;  but  it  was  not  to  increase  the 
English  power,  as  such,  nor  to  extend  the  English  domin- 
ions. It  was  to  be  preserved  for  a  new  altar,  a  new  tem- 
ple, and  a  new  home,  to  arise  in  the  fulness  of  time — a 
new  and  distant  people  perpetuating  England's  glory,  and 
all  the  more  effectually,  from  the  very  fact  of  the  expected 
political  separation. 

The  same  radical  import  may  be  traced  in  the  docu- 
mentary language  that  becomes  fixed  in  the  forms  of  colo- 
nial settlement.  Colonists  are  described  as  men  who  go 
to  "  distant  lands  "  —  to  "  foreign  parts."  Their  object  is 
set  forth  to  be  the  settlement  of  "  waste  or  unknown  coun- 
tries." Geographically,  they  expatriate  themselves.  The 
jurisdiction  of  the  mother  state  is,  or  ought  to  be,  simply 
for  their  protection.  Ee venue  derived  from  them  can 
properly  be  applied  to  no  other  purpose.  Making  it  the 
object  to  enrich  the  mother  country,  to  the  injury  of  their 
political  growth,  is  a  monstrous  violation  of  law  revealed 
in  the  historical  world  as  clearly  as  any  that  God  has 
established  in  the  physical.    In  the  colonizing  spirit  there 

*  See  Thucydides,  I,  24,  and  Duker's  note,  with  his  reference  to  Polybius. 


85 


is  carried  out  that  great  plan  for  the  dispersion  of  the 
nations,  commencing  in  the  plain  of  Shinar.  Steadily  west- 
ward has  been  the  movement  —  at  least  in  the  main  and 
most  vital  stream  of  humanity  —  until  the  circuit  of  the 
earth  has  been  nearly  completed.  During  this  long  march, 
nation  has  ever  been  begetting  nation,  until  we  find  the 
youngest  of  these  embryo  powers  to  be  one  of  our  own 
planting  on  the  far  Pacific* 

*  The  opinion  may  be  an  unpopular  one.  even  among  our  most  loyal  men,  but  the 
writer  would  not  hesitate  to  express  it,  that  the  extension  of  our  republican  state 
beyond  the  Mississippi,  except  so  far  as  security  was  concerned,  or  for  the  planting 
of  future  colonies,  was  a  grave  political  error.  It  was  a  departure  from  one  of  the 
essential  ideas  of  a  true  nationality,  as  demanding  compact  and  well-defined  geo- 
graphical position.  Every  people  have  suffered,  in  the  end,  from  a  violation  of 
this  principle.  They  have  either  ruined  themselves,  or  been  compelled  to  return 
to  their  old  natural  and  historical  boundaries.  Rome  had  to  come  back  to  Italy, 
weaker  and  more  broken  than  though  she  had  never  been  the  mistress  of  the  world. 
France  has  often  overflowed,  but  only  to  subside  each  time,  with  shame  and  loss, 
into  her  old  channel.  She  has  never  gained  strength  or  any  true  glory  by  depart- 
ing from  that  ancient  Gallic  site  which  God  had  "  appointed  as  the  bounds  of  her 
habitation."  England  is  now  in  peril  from  the  same  cause,  unless  she  holds  all  her 
extra  territory  as  in  trust  for  future  political  organizations.  Have  we  not  also  a 
warning  here  ?  The  dauger  is  all  the  greater  from  the  fact  that  this  passion  for 
extra  territory  always  connects  itself  with  a  false  nationality  to  the  marring  of  the 
true  idea.  It  is  the  nationality  of  empire  and  conquest,  instead  of  that  which  God 
has  established  in  language,  lineage,  and  position.  We  have  furnished  already  a 
most  notable  example  of  this.  The  Xorth  has  always  held  the  true  idea,  modest 
and  unassuming,  in  proportion  to  its  depth  and  substance.  We  were  charged  with 
want  of  national  spirit.  Ten  years  ago  the  claim  was  all  made  for  the  men  of  the 
South.  Who  more  national  than  they,  with  their  "manifest  destiny,"  their  '•an- 
nexations," their  Cuba  i: wrestings,"  their  filibuster  expeditions  to  "extend  the 
area  of  freedom  ?  "  In  the  Xorth.  political  solidity  was  desired,  rather  than  any 
indefinite  surface-spread  having  no  natural  bounds  to  determine  it  in  any  direction. 

Xo  small  portion  of  our  present  troubles  may  be  traced  to  this  false  nationality, 
thus  ending  in  the  denial  of  the  true.  How  closely  have  they  been  connected  with 
the  exciting  questions  that  arose  out  of  the  purchase  of  Louisiana,  the  annexation 
of  Texas,  and  the  war  with  Mexico !  All  this  territory  to  the  Pacific,  and  to  the 
unbounded  Xorth,  is  now  in  our  possession.  It  is  a  fearful  trust,  and  we 
are  bound  to  exercise  over  it  a  wise  political  guardianship.  But  this  should 
ever  be  in  view  of  the  possibility  —  yea,  of  the  extreme  probability — that 
these  remote  parts,  separate  from  us  by  deserts,  seas  and  mountains,  will  one  day 
become  separate  nationalities.  Such  an  event  would  be  no  violation  of  our  national 
principle.  These  remote  regions  formed  no  part  of  our  original  territory.  They 
were  unknown  to  our  national  birth-struggle,  whilst,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are 
associated  with  the  most  disorganizing  elements  in  our  history.  A  single  row  of 
states  west  of  the  Mississippi  is  all  that  is  essential  to  our  true  national  strength. 
The  desert  that  lies  beyond,  and  all  beyond  that,  and  so  on  to  the  far  Pacific,  should 


86 


Colonies  have  no  share  in  the  government  of  the  mother 
country,  and  this  fact  alone  makes  the  case  of  their  sepa- 
ration, whether  violent  or  peaceful,  a  totally  different  thing 
from  what  is  commonly  called  revolution  in  a  home  state 
that  has  long  formed  one  political  whole.  Has  the  time 
come  for  the  political  change?  That  is  the  only  question. 
Such  change  ought  to  be  peaceful.  A  birth  travail,  how- 
ever, may  be  one  of  the  high  designs,  and  appointed 
means  of  Providence,  to  give  the  young  nation  a  bolder 
and  stronger  position  in  the  great  family  of  nations.  In 
this  way  Holland  was  made  one  people.  Without  its  hard 
contested  war  it  would  have  been  a  nest  of  miserable  Dutch 
Principalities,  instead  of  a  powerful  commercial  state.* 
And  so,  had  we  dropped  quietly  and  gradually  from  the 
mother's  lap,  we  might  have  been  an  ever-brawling  house- 
hold, or  that  mischievous  brood  of  petty  sovereignties  that 
some  say  we  are.  The  one  common  war  with  mother 
Britain  made  us  one  nation,  if  nothing  else  had  concurred 
to  give  us  that  claim  and  title — one  vital,  vigorous  nation, 
wherein,  after  that,  no  part  had  a  right  to  claim  a  separate 
interest,  or  to  shut  out  any  other  part,  or  parts,  trom  any 
part  of  the  total  community  for  which  all  had  together 
fought  and  bled.  Our  severance,  too,  came  none  too  early. 
Either  the  colonial  growth  must  have  been  most  unjustly 
hindered,  or  we  should  have  become,  long  ago,  too  numer- 
ous and  too  unwieldy  for  a  proper  care  to  be  exercised  over 
us  by  the  distant  parent  land.  That  one  people  should 
continue  to  be  governed  by  another  thus  remotely  distant  is 
politically  unnatural.    It  defeats  the  colonial  idea,  which 

be  regarded  by  us  as  held  in  trust,  with  a  reverent  looking  to  the  developments  of 
Providence,  and  with  a  feeling  of  acquiescence  should  these  point  to  future  politi- 
cal separation. 

An  American  Pacific  nation,  the  child  of  the  older  Atlantic  power ;  there  would 
seem  in  this  a  harmony  both  historical  and  geographical.  Should  such  a  time  ever 
arrive,  it  would  be  found  that  the  conceded  independence  of  these  distant  parts  is 
far  more  consistent  with  our  true  nationality  than  that  irregular  and  indefinite 
annexation  which  was  sought  by  the  authors  of  our  present  troubles,  and,  as  it 
now  most  plainly  appears,  as  the  very  means  of  national  disorganization. 

*  The  United  Provinces  of  Holland  had  not  been,  strictly,  colonies  of  Spain ;  but 
the  resemblance  is  near  enough  to  justify  its  use  in  the  argument. 


87 


is  the  fulfilling  the  ancient  ordinance  of  God  in  the  set- 
tlement of  the  unknown  and  uncultivated  parts  of  the 
earth  with  new  nations,  ever  carrying  with  thern  an  older 
civilization. 

A  colonial  severance,  then,  being  improperly  called  a 
revolution,  let  us  consider  that  to  which  the  name  is  more 
properly  applied,  and  we  shall  find  it  also  to  present  fea- 
tures utterly  opposed  to  this  abnormal  Southern  claim. 
England  and  France  have  had  their  revolutions,  strictly 
such.  They  are  always  violent,  involving  more  or  less  of 
departure  from  the  regular  course  of  the  organic  life,  and, 
in  fact,  seeking  their  justification  on  the  very  ground  that 
that  organic  life  had  become  diseased,  and  could  only  be 
restored  to  health  by  this  harsh  and  anomalous  remedy. 
Sometimes  the  irregularity  has  been  comparatively  slight, 
as  in  the  English  revolution  of  1688.  It  was  more  violent 
and  radical  in  the  one  that  preceded.  The  French  revolu- 
tions have  presented  still  more  of  this  destructive  and 
anomalous  action ;  but  amidst  them  all,  whether  English 
or  French,  there  has  been  one  thing  ever  prominent — one 
idea  never  lost  sight  of — that  forever  separates  these  pro- 
ceedings from  the  claim  set  up  for  insurrection  in  our  land. 
These  revolutions,  instead  of  being  denationalizing,  that 
is,  seeking  to  destroy  a  nation,  or  even  to  divide  it,  have 
been  eminently  characterized  by  the  directly  opposite  spirit. 
The  national  idea  was  never  so  vivid,  the  nation  itself  was 
never  so  strong,  as  when  the  revolution  was  at  its  intensest 
heat.  England  was  never  so  much  England,  one  and  indi- 
visible— never  so  much  a  nation,  proud  of  its  nationality, 
as  in  the  days  of  Cromwell.  France  was  never  so  much 
one  mighty  France,  without  the  least  thought  of  national 
severance,  as  in  the  maddest  paroxysms  of  her  terrible  revo- 
lutions. A  proposition  to  divide  France,  the  Xorth  from  the 
South,  the  East  from  the  West,  the  Mediterranean  from 
the  Atlantic,  or  the  sources  of  her  rivers  from  their  mouths, 
would  have  been  received  with  horror.  It  would  at  once 
have  united  all  parties  in  opposition  to  it.  Robespierre, 
and  Lafayette,  Jacobins  and  Loyalists,  Republicans  and 


88 


Imperialists,  would  all  have  suspended  their  lesser  strife  in 
resistance  to  such  a  catastrophe.  Nor  is  such  a  feeling*  a 
mere  blind  prejudice.  It  is  higher  and  truer  than  our  rea- 
soning. It  is  the  instinct  of  preservation,  innate  in  every 
organic  structure,  from  the  vegetable  up  to  the  human — 
from  the  individual  man,  in  his  strong  passion  for  life,  to 
the  greater  social  and  spiritual  organisms  to  which  God 
and  history  have  given  a  true  political  vitality.  This  feel- 
ing ennobles  a  nation.  It  is  the  foundation  of  national 
character,  and  the  great  conservator  of  the  idea  of  national 
responsibility.  It  has  been  ever  weak  in  the  South,  owing 
to  sectional  causes  that  need  not  now  be  specified.  It 
has  been  ever  strong  in  the  North  and  West.  It  was 
growing  with  our  growth ;  or  if  it  has  been  checked,  or 
weakened,  in  any  degree,  it  has  been  owing  to  that  dena- 
tionalizing doctrine  of  state  sovereignty  which  some  have 
so  assiduously  taught. 

This  feeling  of  political  wholeness,  as  the  ground  of  poli- 
tical responsibility,  was  the  conservative  power  that  saved 
all  that  was  valuable  in  France.  A  severance  in  space 
would  have  had  all  the  evil  effect  of  a  severance  in  time 
— cutting  off  the  nation  from  its  historical  reminiscences 
by  destroying  its  geographical  identity.  But  this  was  the 
very  thing  to  be  preserved ;  and  so,  amid  all  the  convul- 
sions of  the  French  people,  it  was  still  the  same  France. 
Her  interior  divisions  were  all  changed,  but  the  historical 
whole  remained  intact  and  fair  as  ever.  Monarchy,  feu- 
dality, nobility,  all  went  down ;  the  body  politic  assumed 
all  forms — royalty,  absolute  and  constitutional,  republi- 
canism, extreme  democracy,  imperial  despotism,  —  but  the 
nation,  the  one  indivisible  nation,  still  survived.  It  came 
out  stronger  than  ever.  The  storm  had  actually  increased 
its  cohesive  and  self-conserving  power.  In  all  other  things 
there  was  the  wildest  radicalism.  During  these  political 
upheavings  the  idea  of  popular  self-government,  or  of 
"government  founded  solely  on  the  consent  of  the  gov- 
erned"— to  use  the  language  of  the  times — was  carried  to 
the  extreme  of  democratic  extravagance ;  but  it  never 


89 


touched  this  national  idea,  and  this  national  life  which 
lived  on  amid  all  outward  and  organic  mutations.  The 
right  of  self-government  was  ever  of  the  wThole,  and  for  the 
whole.  It  was  as  though  even  in  ungodly  and  atheistical 
souls,  there  was  still  a  recognition  of  something  higher  in 
government  than  the  mere  earthly  work.  Man  was,  in- 
deed, something  more  than  an  instrument  in  political  crea- 
tions; he  had  his  lower  human  province;  forms  were 
his  to  mold  as  he  pleased  in  less  or  greater  flexibility; 
the  mode  in  which  a  people  should  exercise  their  nation- 
ality, or  their  right  of  self-government,  was,  in  great  mea- 
sure, left  to  their  own  responsible  agency ;  but  beyond 
this  there  was  a  limitation.  "Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and 
no  farther."  It  was  the  word  of  God  as  uttered  in  his- 
tory. Peoples  and  nationalities  themselves  were  His 
work.  Here  man,  of  his  own  will,  or  under  any  abstract 
pretense,  had  no  right  to  meddle.  If  ever  he  acts  in  the 
severance  or  dissolution  of  a  nation,  it  must  be  as  the  ac- 
knowledged instrument  of  God ;  it  must  be  from  a  cause 
so  urgent,  or  from  a  reason  so  holy,  as  to  leave  no  doubt 
of  the  divine  commission.  If  it  was  not  this  religions 
feeling  that  restrained  the  French  people,  it  was  some- 
thing resembling  it — something  that  took,  for  them,  the 
place  and  form  of  worship.  It  was  the  reverential  instinct 
of  nationality  that  awed  their  souls  and  checked  their 
wildest  progress. 

This  right  of  self-government,  as  claimed  in  France,  was 
the  right  of  the  whole,  as  a  whole,  or  of  each  part,  even  the 
humblest  part,  as  a  part,  to  a  share  in  the  government 
of  such  whole,  and  in  all  the  vast  benefits  that  came  from 
being  a  member  of  so  strong  and  glorious  a  totality.* 

*  A  false  idea  ever  involves  itself  in  contradictions.  The  setting  up  a  right  of 
separate  self-government  in  a  part,  is  a  denial  of  any  true  right  of  self-government 
in  the  previous  whole,  since  such  right  in  the  whole  is  immediately  estopped 
by  the  action  of  any  part.  The  inconsistency  goes  farther  than  this.  It  must  deny 
the  most  important  right  of  each  part ;  that  is,  its  right  in  every  other  part,  involv- 
ing its  right  of  sharing  in  the  self-government  of  such  a  whole,  as  a  much  more  valu- 
able thing  (so  deemed  by  it)  than  any  petty  government  of  its  own  solitanr  self. 

It  is,  also,  the  destruction  of  all  national  morality,  inward  as  well  as  outward.  As 

12 


90 


Essentially  different  from  it  was  the  claim  of  severance,  or 
of  separate  government,  by  each  part,  and,  of  course,  by 
each  part  of  each  part.  No  revolutionary  feeling,  in  all  its 
dissolving  madness,  could  tolerate  such  an  assertion  for  a 
moment.  The  Sans  culottes  would  have  been  as  much 
opposed  to  it  as  the  proud  old  noble  in  his  chateau.  Dan- 
ton  would  have  been  as  far  from  giving  it  countenance  as 
the  haughtiest  Bourbon  on  his  throne.  In  explanation 
of  this,  it  might  be  said,  perhaps,  that  France  had  been  a 
nation  for  ages.  But  what  had  made  and  kept  her  such  ? 
It  was  this  very  sentiment  that  God  had  implanted  as  part 
of  our  social  human  nature,  giving  entity  and  identity  to 
nations  once  historically  formed,  and  clothing  them  with 
all  those  attributes  of  responsible  being  which  the  Scrip- 
tures predicate  of  political  communities  as  clearly  as  of 
individual  men.*  It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  however, 
as  a  most  important  fact  in  our  present  reasoning,  that  in 
the  early  history  of  France  there  was  far  less  of  this  historic 
organizing  power  than  has  marked  our  own  political 
growth.  It  took  ages  to  bring  her  out  of  her  chaos  of 
loose  feudalities  into  political  symmetry  and  compactness. 

there  can  be  no  internal  trust,  no  self-confidence,  or  consciousness  of  national  integ- 
rity, so  there  can  be  no  external  responsibility  exercised  by  or  towards  a  people 
when  such  right  is  claimed  as  inherent  in  any  and  every  part.  It  destroys  national 
identity,  a  thing  in  which  other  nations  have  a  claim  and  an  interest.  No  treaty 
can  be  made  with  such  a  people ;  no  loans  can  be  made  by  or  for  them ;  there  can 
be  no  sound  political  or  commercial  intercourse  to  which  they  are  parties.  Where 
such  a  principle  prevails,  there  is  no  true  political  existence.  It  is  a  deformed 
polypodal  monster,  without  any  responsible  soul,  or  even  any  principle  of  bodily 
cohesion. 

A  nation  owes  it  to  other  nations  to  preserve  itself.  It  is  the  only  way  it  can 
fulfill  its  obligations  to  them.  Without  this  there  can  be  no  "law  of  nations,"  as 
there  can  be,  in  fact,  no  true  political  science  nor  political  philosophy. 

*  It  is  a  striking  feature  of  the  Scripture  language,  this  continual  recognition  of 
the  identity,  or,  as  we  might  well  call  it,  political  personality,  of  nations.  Israel, 
Egypt,  Assyria,  are  as  distinctly  addressed  with  exhortation,  praise,  rebuke,  as 
David  and  Solomon.  The  component  individual  atoms  are  ever  flowing,  but  the 
nation  lives  on.  It  is  threatened  with  retribution  in  ages  to  come  for  crimes  com- 
mitted in  ages  past.  It  is  not  one  generation,  or  one  set  of  men,  punished  for  the 
sins  of  another,  but  the  same  indivisible  political  being,  regarded  as  ever  carrying 
its  moral  responsibilities  with  it  down  to  the  time  of  its  utter  dissolution,  when  it 
disappears  from  the  earth. 


91 


The  historic  causes  that  had  made  her  a  monarchy  so 
strong  and  homogenous  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIV,  had 
less  of  shaping  unity  than  the  identities  of  race  and  lan- 
guage, the  affinities  of  colonial  enterprise,  the  mutual 
dependencies,  the  catholicity  of  ideas,  the  ecumenical  con- 
gresses, the  one  long  birth  war,  the  sworn  compacts,  the 
solemn  treaties  with  foreign  powers,  that,  all  combined, 
made  us  one  great  rejniblican  state — such  as  it  was  in 
the  days  of  Andrew  Jackson,  when  we  were  defying  all  the 
world,  and  the  very  men  who  would  now  tear  us  to  pieces 
were  the  loudest  in  their  talk  of  carrying  the  E  Pluribus 
TJxmi,  the  one  American  flag,  trom  the  isthmus  of  Darien 
to  the  shores  of  the  Frozen  ocean. 

The  French  preserved  this  strong  feeling  of  nationality 
during  the  period  of  what  may  be  called  their  intensest 
individualism.  It  was  held  sacred  all  the  time  they  were 
shouting  their  loudest  for  the  "rights  of  man"  in  their 
most  ultra  form.  And  in  this  there  was  no  inconsistency. 
The  whole  glory  of  the  revolutionary  idea — when  it  has 
any  glory — has  been  its  conservative  plea,  as  the  only 
means  of  preserving  a  cherished  nationality  from  that  de- 
struction which  wrong  government  would  inevitably  bring 
upon  it.  The  welfare  of  parts,  and  of  individuals,  is 
involved.  "The  French  people,  the  French  nation,  one 
and  indivisible" — this  was  the  revolutionary  tocsin.  They 
had  suffered  from  monarchy,  they  were  suffering  from  the 
wildness  of  an  untamed  democracy,  they  were  in  danger 
of  military  despotism ;  but  no  evils,  under  any  form  of 
government,  could  be  so  great,  in  the  end,  as  those  that 
would  arise  from  a  severed  France,  presenting  again  the 
petty  despotisms,  as  well  as  the  weakness  of  the  Mero- 
vingian dynasties.  These  despotisms  might  take  a  differ- 
ent form  in  modern  times,  but  a  great  nation  was  the  best 
protection  against  either  extreme  of  excess  that  bad  gov- 
ernment might  present ;  and  hence  each  individual  French- 
man instinctively  felt  that  his  highest  political  good  was 
connected  with  the  idea  of  one  great  and  indivisible 
France.    If  there  was  national  vanity,  there  was  also 


92 


something  higher  and  more  conservative  in  the  thought. 
Hence  it  is  that  such  revolutions,  with  all  their  excesses, 
have  actually  strengthened  the  nation  as  an  organic 
power;  they  have  given  it  a  new  impetus  of  life,  a  new 
glow  of  national  feeling,  promising  a  perpetuity  that 
was  endangered  by  the  diseases  and  corruptions  of  the  old 
stagnant  body. 

The  design,  in  dwelling  upon  these  points,  is  to  show  the 
antipolar  difference  between  this  historical  phenomenon 
called  revolution — as  it  has  been  exhibited  in  England  and 
France — and  any  claim  that  may  be  set  up  for  the  South- 
ern secessionist,  either  by  himself,  or  by  his  sympathizing 
friends  in  Europe.  What  would  the  editor,  or  readers,  of 
the  London  Times  think  of  a  movement  that  threatened 
to  divide  England  by  a  line  north  and  south,  or  that  should 
cut  off  from  their  mouths  the  sources  of  the  Severn  and 
the  Thames,  or  sever  the  connection  with  Scotland,  or  re- 
duce England,  in  short,  to  that  old  Heptarchichal  anarchy 
which  had  so  much  less  of  germinal  nationality  than  the 
loosest  historical  tie  that  ever  bound  together  our  embryo 
colonial  membership ! 

This  Southern  claim,  as  made  by  Jefferson  Davis  in  one 
of  his  late  messages,  is,  in  fact,  a  new  thing  under  the  sun. 
It  is  a  monstrosity,  having  no  parallel,  nor  likeness,  in  his- 
tory— this  assertion  of  a  right  to  cut  a  nation  in  two,  and 
that  at  a  period  of  its  most  vigorous  life.  It  is  like  asking 
a  strong  healthy  man  to  submit  to  amputation,  as  the  right 
(if  we  may  indulge  so  strange  a  supposition)  of  the  part 
demanding  it,  without  any  regard  to  the  pain  and  loss  of 
life  that  may  come  to  the  whole,  and  to  every  other  part 
as  having  its  life  and  highest  well-being  involved  in  the 
conservation  of  such  whole. 

Opposition  to  this  by  the  loyal  parts — in  other  words, 
uncompromising  war  with  it — is  simply  matter  of  neces- 
sity. We  are  compelled  to  fight  it  as  we  would  the  wolf 
who  has  his  fangs  upon  our  throat;  and  that  wolf  might 
just  as  well  claim  to  be  "let  alone,"  or  to  be  acting  in  self- 
defense,  as  the  secessionist.  Mr.  Lincoln  sees  the  case  intui- 


93 


lively,  and,  in  his  peculiar  way,  reaches  out,  at  once,  to  the 
conclusion.  He  gives  it  in  the  form  of  an  apothegm,  or 
enthynieine,  in  which  the  whole  reasoning  is  involved  in 
a  skillful  statement  of  the  fact :  llTlu  ivar  will  cease  on 
the  part  of  the  nation  when  it  shall  have  ceased  on  the  part 
of  those  ivlw  began  it"  Peace,  in  the  usual  form  of  nego- 
tiation (as  between  parties  foreign  to  each  other)  would, 
in  this  case,  be  simply  surrender.  It  must  be  a  peace 
that  preserves  our  nationality  entire.  Any  other  is  not 
only  undesirable,  but  impossible  ;  for  the  very  attempt  to 
make  it  is  a  dissolution  of  stronger  and  more  sacred  bonds 
than  it  can  ever  bind  again.  When  we  see  this,  and  learn 
to  act  steadily  upon  it,  then  only  can  we  cherish  the  idea 
of  peace,  whether  in  the  near  or  in  the  distant  view.  No 
treaty  can  be  made  with  the  men — for  no  treaty  can  hold 
the  men — who  have  trampled  under  foot  the  constitution 
of  the  United  States. 

The  entire  argument  here  may  be  summed  up  in  two 
brief  propositions.  The  first  is  a  simple  statement  of  fact, 
the  second  a  conclusion  following  irresistibly  from  it. 

Proposition  1st.  The  United  States  is  a  nation. 

Waiving  any  other  proof  of  this,  such  as  has  been  else- 
where advanced,  we  may  rest  it  simply  on  the  historical 
facts  presented  by  the  past  eighty  years.  No  one  would 
venture  to  deny  the  nationality  of  England,  France  or 
Holland;  but  what  evidence  is  there  of  such  nationality 
that  has  not  existed  in  our  own  case  ?  We  define  a  man 
from  the  acts  of  a  man.  There  can  be  no  better  rule  for 
nations.  We  might  begin  first  with  acts  that  are  purely 
interior,  though  having  an  outward  relation.  To  this  class 
belong  all  public  works  that  would  never  have  had  a  being, 
had  it  not  been  for  such  a  res-piiblica,  or  acknowledged 
tvholeness.  Every  fortress,  custom  house,  navy  yard,  ship 
of  war,  &c,  is  a  visible  proof  of  our  nationality.  But  we 
prefer,  as  more  striking  evidence,  though  not  more  con- 
clusive, the  national  acts  that  have  characterized  us  in  our 
foreign  relations.  What,  in  this  respect,  have  France  and 
England  done  that  we  have  not  done  ?    Wars,  treaties  of 


94 


peace,  commercial  alliances,  extra-tradition  acts,  commis- 
sioning- and  reception  of  ambassadors,  consuls,  interna- 
tional agents  of  every  kind — national  courtesies,  national 
protests — all  acts,  in  short,  that  can  be  found  in  modern 
history  as  peculiar  to  the  acknowledgment  of  national 
being,  have  been  transacted  lij  us,  and  with  ns,  as  one 
people  represented,  in  such  transactions,  by  one  acknow- 
ledged national  power,  to  which  alone  the  foreign  power 
could  bind  itself,  and  from  which  alone,  as  the  one  party 
bound,  it  could  seek  redress  of  grievances  alleged.  Euro- 
peans have  known  here  but  one  such  national  entity.  Such, 
both  in  the  letter  and  in  the  spirit,  has  been  the  language 
we  have  held  to  them  and  they  to  us.  "  There  shall  be 
firm  peace  and  amity  between  the  British  nation  and  the 
subjects  of  Her  Majesty  Queen  Victoria,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  United  States  of  America  and  the  people  and 
citizens  thereof,  on  the  other;"  such  is  the  style  of  every 
treaty.*    For  eighty  years  have  such  forms  been  assented 

*  The  denial  of  a  nation's  totality  would  seem  to  be  a  denial  of  its  national  exist- 
ence. It  would  also  seem  to  follow,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  between  a  nation 
so  denying,  and  one  so  denied,  all  treaties  of  every  kind  must  be  at  an  end ;  since 
they  were  made  between  two  supposed  wholes,  and  can  have  no  validity  on  any 
other  hypothesis.  Two  such  nations  are  in  a  state  of  nature  to  each  other ;  there 
can  be  no  "law  of  nations  "  nor  political  code  of  any  kind  between  them.  They  do 
not  know  each  other.  The  treaties  between  us  and  Great  Britain  were  made  with 
the  United  States,  as  a  geographical  and  political  whole,  far  better  defined  than  that 
conglomerate  mass  commonly  called  "  the  British  Empire."  England  has,  therefore, 
no  right  to  limit  her  own  relations  to  a  part  of  the  United  States,  or  to  deal  with 
other  parts,  in  any  way,  as  though  they  were  not  parts  of  such  a  whole.  This  was 
the  attitude  she  assumed  at  the  very  start  of  the  rebellion.  Of  late,  however,  the 
British  ministry  would  seem  to  have  gone  even  a  step  farther.  It  appears,  in  a  late 
state  paper  of  Lord  Russell,  that  they  have  ever  regarded  us  as  at  least  two  separate 
peoples, — though,  for  nearly  a  century,  treating  with  us  and  in  all  respects  dealing 
with  us,  as  one.  He  talks  of  the  "friendship  England  has  ever  entertained  for  the 
South  as  well  as  for  the  Xorth."  There  is  no  mistaking  this  language.  If  held  by  us 
in  regard  to  the  relations  of  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  India,  Canada,  Australia,  they 
would  immediately  understand  its  import.  Now  Lord  John  Russell  is  no  great 
political  philosopher,  but  his  position  gives  his  speech  a  significance,  which,  it  would 
seem,  must  demand  an  explanation  from  our  government.  If  it  has  been  "  Xorth 
and  South,"  and  not  "  the  United  States  of  America,"  that  Great  Britain  has  been  so 
long  dealing  with,  it  is  high  time  that  our  mutual  positions  in  the  family  of  nations 
should  be  better  understood.  Where  is  the  old  United  States,  the  only  United 
States  known  to  England,  or  to  the  world  ?    The  South  does  not  claim  to  be  it,  in  any 


95 


to  by  our  commissioned  ambassadors,  ratified  by  our 
Senate,  signed  by  our  President,  carried  out  by  acts  of  Con- 
gress, declared  valid  by  our  one  national  Supreme  Court, 
acknowledged  by  all  the  people  collectively,  acted  upon 
iu  our  nation's  history,  and  held  judicially  binding  upon 
every  individual  man  in  his  individual  responsibility. 
There  is  no  higher  proof,  in  kind,  of  national  existence, 
and  in  the  degree  and  frequency  of  such  action,  during 
our  eighty  years  historic  life,  we  have  been  exceeded 
by  no  nation  under  heaven. 

Proposition  2d.  Given  a  nation — every  part  of  such  nation 
having  a  corporate  character,  and  every  part  of  such  part, 
down  to  the  individual  citizen,  have,  thereby,  acquired  a 
right  in  the  whole  nationality,  and  in  all  its  parts,  which 
no  other  part,  or  parts,  could  take  away  from  him,  or  them, 
without  injustice. 

TTe  apply  this  to  the  United  States.  It  results  directly 
from  the  idea,  we  have  so  labored  to  impress,  of  a  true 
nation  as  having  a  real,  pervading  national  life — showing 
itself  to  be  real  by  the  fact  that  a  hurt  to  it  in  any  one 
part  is  felt  in  every  other — thus  making  it  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  a  mere  mass,  or  mass-meeting,  having  no 
such  interpenetrating  and  vitalizing  unity.  From  such 
fact  of  vitality  it  follows  that  the  violent  severance  of  a 
nation,  instead  of  being  merely  an  assertion  of  self-gov- 
ernment, or  of  self-defence,  by  the  part  that  attempts  the 
severance,  is,  in  fact,  in  the  very  face  of  such  idea  of  self- 
government  in  its  most  true  and  important  aspect  as  the 
right  of  the  whole,  and  of  each  part  in  the  whole.  It 
would  be  wrong  if  these  loyal  parts  were  few ;  it  acquires 
a  corresponding  degree  of  enormity  when  the  parts  thus 
wronged  are  a  great  majority  of  the  old  political  body. 
The  "social  compact"  theory,  once  such  a  favorite  with  a 
certain  class  of  political  writers,  requires,  in  some  way,  the 
assent  of  each  part  to  the  formation  of  a  state.  Without 

sense.  The  Xorth  alone  has  no  title  to  the  historical  epithet.  The  United  Stares 
is  no  longer  a  political  existence ;  it  is  gone  from  the  political  map,  or  it  is  what  it 
has  ever  been,  one  and  indivisible. 


96 


here  accepting  or  controverting  any  such  theory,  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  say  that  there  is  far  more  power,  as  well  as  truth, 
in  the  argument,  that  in  a  state  once  formed,  and  how- 
ever formed,  the  protest  of  even  one  part  should  avail 
against  its  wanton  dissolution.  When  it  has  become  the 
fouutain  of  political  life  to  generations  born  under  it,  every 
portion,  however  minute,  acquires  a  vested  right  in  its 
continuance.  Much  more  is  this  true  of  the  whole.  And 
here  we  recur  again  to  the  old  analogy  between  a  nation 
and  the  individual ;  a  man's  right  to  be  born  may  be 
questioned;  his  right  to  live  after  being  born  is  certainly  a 
higher  and  less  disputable  claim. 

If  it  be  objected  that  the  course  of  reasoning  here 
adopted  respecting  parts  and  wholes,  and  national  vitali- 
ties, is  too  metaphysical  and  abstract,  it  may  be  replied 
that  all  truth  of  highest  value  runs  up,  at  last,  into  the 
metaphysical  and  theological.  Only  when  we  get  above 
the  flowing — or  find  in  the  flowing  an  abiding  life  and  types 
of  things  that  stand — do  we  truly  attain  to  the  harmony  of 
ideas.  The  purest  theory,  too,  is  ever  the  most  practical, 
as  is  shown  by  the  practical  mischiefs  that,  in  the  long  run, 
ever  result  from  the  neglect,  or  contempt,  of  its  teachings. 

The  United  States  —  the  nation  so  called  —  is  a  high 
reality,  distinct  from  the  flowing  individual  masses  of  men 
and  women  that  now  seem  to  compose  it,  and  that  rind  in 
it  their  highest  earthly  rights.  It  is  one  of  the  creations 
of  God,  as  much  so  as  the  earth  and  man.  It  came  down 
to  us  from  the  past ;  it  will  go  from  us  into  the  future. 
As  far  as  our  mundane  being  is  concerned,  "we  perish,  but 
it  remaineth" — imperfect,  indeed,  yet  still  most  real  — 
sharing,  like  other  creations,  in  the  destiny  of  the  mutable 
and  the  temporal,  yet  still  presenting  one  of  the  highest 
earthly  figures  of  "  the  Dominion  that  passeth  not  away." 

Such  views  may  be  pronounced  mystic  or  transcendental, 
but  woe  to  the  people  by  whom  they  are  wholly  neglected. 
For  Secessionists  themselves,  however,  there  is  an  appeal 
which  even  they  must  admit  to  be  eminently  practical, 
involving,  as  it  does,  that  most  intelligible,  if  not  most 


97 


elevated  mode  of  reasoning,  entitled  the  argumentum  ad 
homines.  A  very  efficient  medicine  is  sometimes  extracted 
from  very  poisonous  materials.  We  have  employed  this 
process  in  the  use  before  made  of  that  most  shameless  of 
political  papers,  the  Ostend  Manifesto.  In  a  similar  man- 
ner may  Henry  A.  Wise  be  made  to  serve  the  cause  of 
truth  and  loyalty.  We  summon  to  the  witnesses  box 
this  arch-secessionist.  Ten  years  ago,  in  the  then  loyal 
but  now  rebellious  city  of  Eichmond,  he  gave  the  follow- 
ing most  significant  toast : 

44  The  Rights  of  the  States  —  and,  foremost  among  them,  the 
Right  to  the  blessed  Union  of  the  States." 

We  appeal  from  Henry  A.  Wise,  drunk  with  secession 
in  1864,  to  Henry  A.  Wise  sober  in  1851.  His  doctrine 
is  true,  and  most  admirably  stated.  It  contains  a  mine 
of  political  philosophy.  A  more  complete  exhibition  of 
the  highest  "state  right"  was  never  so  concisely  made. 
The  men  now  in  rebellion  at  the  South  —  all  who  sympa- 
thize with  them  at  the  North  —  are  the  worst  foes  to  the 
political  dogma  of  which  they  claim  to  be  the  peculiar  advo- 
cates. They,  on  the  other  hand,  who  would  wage  uncom- 
promising war  with  such  rebellion,  are  the  true  friends  of 
state  rights,  and  especially  of  that  which  is  "foremost 
among  them,"  the  right  of  the  states — the  right  of  each 
state — the  right  of  each  individual  man  of  each  state  — 
to  all  the  benefits  of  nationality,  strength,  security,  protec- 
tion from  abroad,  peace  within,  popular  glory,  humanitarian 
progress,  and  spiritual  elevation,  that  have  flowed,  or  may 
be  expected  to  flow,  from  the  blessed  union  of  the 

STATES. 

13 


.........  ... 


mm 


